Northern Nigeria food is built on grain, groundnut, baobab leaf and milk. The everyday meal is tuwo, a smooth swallow of rice, maize or guinea corn eaten with soups like miyan kuka, and the northern delicacies people ask about include masa, dan wake, kilishi, kuli kuli and fura da nono, most of them from Hausa and Fulani kitchens.
Here are 13 northern Nigerian dishes, grouped the way you'd meet them in a northern home: swallows, soups, one-pot meals, breakfast breads, preserved meat, snacks and drinks. Every one has an AFN recipe so you can cook it wherever you live.
Swallows: the tuwo family
Tuwo is a Hausa word for a stiff, cooked mass of grain, and it names a whole family rather than one dish. Which grain you use gives each tuwo its own name, and Hausa households treat them as different dishes, not swaps for one another.
1. Tuwo shinkafa (Hausa rice swallow)
Soft short-grain rice is cooked past the point most cooks would stop, then mashed against the side of the pot until the grains come together as a smooth dough. It's the tuwo most tied to Hausa cooking and the one most often served to guests, and it's eaten in Niger too. Ghanaians know a close version as omo tuo. Make it with our tuwo shinkafa recipe.
2. Tuwon masara (corn meal swallow)
Masara is maize, so this is maize swallow, paler, milder and a little sweeter than the guinea corn version. It's one of the plainest things the north cooks, and that's deliberate: it's there to carry the soup. Follow our tuwon masara recipe.
3. Tuwon dawa da miyan kuka
Dawa is guinea corn, or sorghum, the older grain of the Sahel, grown in northern Nigeria long before maize arrived. Tuwon dawa with miyan kuka is one of the fixed pairings of northern eating: a stiff, pale swallow beside a dark green, drawing soup. Cook both with our tuwon dawa da miyan kuka recipe.
Northern soups
4. Miyan kuka (baobab leaves soup)
Kuka is dried, ground baobab leaf, sold as a dark green powder in markets across the north. It's whisked into seasoned stock at the very end, which gives the soup its body and its draw. Northerners will warn you it doesn't look appetising, then serve it anyway, because nobody argues about the taste. The soup is also known as luru. Get the method in our miyan kuka recipe. Miyan taushe, the pumpkin and groundnut soup, is the other northern soup you'll hear named first, especially with alkubus.
One-pot meals and dumplings
5. Pate Hausa food
Pate is a grain porridge of cracked corn or rice, loaded with vegetables, meat and groundnut until it becomes a full meal in one pot. It's especially linked to Nasarawa and Kaduna states. Kenaf leaf (rama) and sorrel leaf (yakuwa) go in late so they keep their colour, and brisket bones give the stock its depth. Try our pate Hausa food recipe.
6. Dan wake
The name means son of beans in Hausa. Dan wake are dumplings of bean flour and kuka, cooked in water until they float, then dressed with oil and spice and eaten with raw vegetables and hard-boiled egg. Kanwa, a traditional potash, gives them their texture. See our dan wake recipe.
Breakfast and breads
7. Hausa masa
Masa, also called waina, is a small fermented rice cake cooked in a special pan with shallow round wells. The rice batter rises overnight, and the holes that open on top as it cooks show the fermentation has worked. It's breakfast food and snack food at once, and one of the dishes most closely tied to the Hausa. Make it with our Hausa masa recipe.
8. Alkubus
Alkubus is a soft Hausa wheat bread that's usually steamed rather than baked, so it comes out tender and faintly sour from the yeast. Some cooks bake it in a pan as a loaf instead. It's made to be eaten with soup, and northerners name miyan taushe as its partner first. Follow our alkubus recipe.
Preserved meat: kilishi, dambu and suya
Drying meat let northern cooks keep it through the long dry season without a fridge, and the methods became delicacies in their own right.
9. Kilishi (beef jerky)
Kilishi, sometimes written killishi, is beef sliced thin enough to see light through, dried, coated in a paste of ground groundnut and spices, dried again and briefly finished over heat. That groundnut coating is what sets it apart from other dried meats. Make it with our killishi recipe.
10. Dambu nama (shredded meat)
Dambu nama is beef that's dried, shredded into fine fibres and fried, closer to meat floss than to jerky. It's popular with Hausa and Fulani families, and the name simply means shredded meat. See our dambu nama recipe.
Suya belongs here too. Its spice blend, yaji, comes from the Hausa suya tradition and is built on ground roasted groundnut, and every vendor guards their own mix. Blend your own with our yaji recipe.
Snacks and drinks
11. Kuli kuli
Kuli kuli is a crunchy peanut snack. Roasted peanuts are ground, the oil is pressed out of the paste, and the dry solids are shaped and fried in that same oil, so nothing goes to waste. It's still made by hand in Hausa communities and eaten from Nigeria to Ghana. Try our kuli kuli recipe.
12. Fura da nono
Fura is a spiced millet ball and nono is soured milk. Mash the first into the second and you have a meal you drink from a bowl or calabash. Fulani, Hausa and Zarma-Songhai people all make it, and it's sold across northern Nigeria, Niger and Ghana. Make it with our fura da nono recipe.
13. Tigernut drink (kunun aya)
Kunun aya is the north's tigernut milk: soaked tigernuts blended with dates or coconut, sometimes ginger, then strained into a sweet, creamy drink. It's part of the same family of kunu drinks as kunun zaki and kunun gyada, and you'll see it sold in bottles and bags across the country now. Follow our tigernut drink recipe.
Northern Nigerian food questions people ask
What is the most common food in Northern Nigeria?
Tuwo with soup. Tuwo shinkafa, tuwon masara and tuwon dawa are everyday staples, eaten with soups such as miyan kuka and miyan taushe.
What does tuwo mean?
Tuwo is Hausa for a stiff, cooked mass of grain. The second word tells you the grain: shinkafa is rice, masara is maize and dawa is guinea corn.
What is miyan kuka made of?
Powdered baobab leaves whisked into a seasoned stock at the end of cooking. The leaf powder thickens the soup and gives it its drawing texture.
Is suya from Northern Nigeria?
Yes. Suya and its yaji spice blend come from the Hausa suya tradition of Northern Nigeria.
What do Hausa people eat for breakfast?
Masa is the classic answer; it's eaten as breakfast and as a snack. Fura da nono is another, since it works as both food and drink.
