Platter of Chicken Perloo
Photography by Clay Williams

Many of the one-pot rice dishes in the Lowcountry and the South can trace their origins back to West Africa. There’s jollof rice in West Africa, jambalaya in Louisiana, and here in the Lowcountry? We’ve got red rice and chicken perloo. Chicken perloo has a lot of the same western European and African cooking styles you find in dishes like Spanish paella and Ghanaian jollof rice. However, tender chicken, ambrosial stock, and perfectly fluffed rice make this a true Lowcountry dish. 

Excerpt from the new book Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from The Matriarch of Edisto Island, by Emily Meggett, published by Abrams. Text © 2022 Emily Meggett. Photography by Clay Williams.

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