COPPERFungie recipe
Antigua's cornmeal staple cooked with sliced okra, which gives it its slippery texture, and shaped into balls in a wet bowl.
Ingredients
- 8 okra
- 250 g cornmeal
- 750 ml water
- 25 g butter
- 1 tsp salt
How to make Fungie
- Slice 8 okra pods into thin rings. Okra is what makes this fungee and not plain polenta.
- Boil 750 ml water with 1 tsp salt and cook the okra 5 minutes until soft, then lift it out with a slotted spoon and keep the cooking water.
- Stir 250 g fine cornmeal into 750 ml cold water until the slurry is lump-free.
- Pour the slurry into the okra water over medium heat and stir hard and without stopping for 8-10 minutes, until the mass pulls away from the pot.
- Fold the okra back in with 25 g butter and beat 2 minutes more, until the fungee turns glossy.
- Wet a small bowl with cold water, drop in a scoop of fungee and swirl it quickly into a smooth ball; repeat for each portion.
- Turn the balls out onto plates and serve hot with pepperpot or saltfish. Fungee is served as balls, never sliced like polenta.
What is Fungie?
Fungie is a traditional dish from Antigua and Barbuda, boiled, and takes about 30 minutes from start to finish. It is built around cornmeal and butter. The recipe below uses 5 ingredients and is written out step by step.
How long does Fungie take?
At 30 minutes it is quicker than 97% of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas. Copper's atlas has 6 dishes built on cornmeal. The method runs to 7 steps, the longest being 8 minutes.
Any tips for making Fungie?
Mix the cornmeal with cold water first so it is lump-free, then stir hard without stopping until the mass pulls away from the pot.
How Fungie compares
At 30 minutes, Fungie is among the 20 quickest of the 586 dishes Copper documents.
Cooked with the same thing elsewhere
Other traditional dishes built on cornmeal, from other countries.
- Flying fish and cou-cou 🇧🇧 Barbados
- Kačamak 🇲🇪 Montenegro
- Bori bori 🇵🇾 Paraguay
- Mămăligă 🇷🇴 Romania
Copper documents Antigua and Barbuda alongside 197 other countries. Every recipe is free to read, with the full ingredient list and every step.