Soup Joumou

Every January 1st, Haiti’s Independence Day, no Haitian family can reunite all its members without lovingly sharing a bowl of soup joumou. Part of Haiti’s cultural heritage, soup joumou is traditionally based on a large winter squash that looks like a pumpkin, the turban squash. It is said that the turban squash is the local pumpkin of the West Indies. After having prepared a soaked, a mixture of different spices, herbs and vegetables mixed together to give a puréed consistency, the preparation of soup joumou begins with the inevitable beef marinade made of this soaked and other ingredients such as lime, parsley, thyme, chili, clove, or shallot. After marinating the beef for at least 3 hours, the meat is cooked first. Then, vegetables such as carrot, celery, leek, turnip, plantain banana, onion, potato, cabbage, and malanga (yam) are added. At the same time the turban squash is cooked separately and mashed before being added to the beef and vegetable mixture. At the end of cooking, pasta of your choice is added, such as spaghetti, penne, diced macaroni or vermicelli. In Haitian Creole, it is sung that this soup contains: “vyann, joumou, kawot, seleri, zanyon, nef, pomdete, malanga, shou, piman bouk, ten, lay et sitwon”. The unique feature of soup joumou preparation is the use of lime and sometimes bitter oranges to marinate the beef before cooking it. This gives the soup a slightly tart flavor. A more or less authentic version of this soup in some regions also uses pikliz.