Tinned Beans, Peas & Veg

Rice and peas is Sunday dinner across the Caribbean, and the tin in this aisle decides which version you are making. Tinned peas and beans skip the overnight soak entirely — drain, add, and you are cooking.

Red kidney beans are the everyday choice. Simmered with coconut milk, spring onion, thyme and a whole scotch bonnet, they give you the rice and peas most people eat week to week. Dunn's River 400g.

Gungo peas — also called pigeon peas — are the Christmas version. Earthier and firmer than kidney beans, with a flavour that is unmistakably festive to anyone who grew up with it. We stock Dunn's River gungo peas and green pigeon peas, both 400g. The two names refer to the same pea.

Butter beans are larger and softer, good in stews and with oxtail. Blackeye beans carry a nuttier flavour and turn up in both Caribbean and West African cooking.

For rice and peas you will also want coconut milk, scotch bonnet, spring onion and thyme, and rice. Gungo peas have their own page — see Gungo Peas.