Recettes

Kilishi, Northern Nigerian spiced dried beef coated in a groundnut and pepper paste

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

Kilishi is Northern Nigerian dried meat, and it is a considerably more deliberate thing than the jerky it is usually compared to. Beef is sliced thin enough to be translucent, dried, coated in a paste built on ground groundnuts and spices, dried again, and briefly finished over heat. The groundnut coating is what separates kilishi from every other dried meat in the world. It is a preservation technology first. In the Sahel, where refrigeration was not available and the dry season is long, thin slicing and sun drying kept meat edible for months, and the spice paste added flavour while doing further preservation work. That the result is now sold as a delicacy rather than as survival food does not change what it was built for. Kilishi is Hausa, sold in markets across the north and increasingly across the whole of Nigeria and among the diaspora, where it travels well precisely because it was designed to. It is eaten as a snack rather than as part of a meal, torn into pieces, often with a cold drink. The heat level varies by maker, and the yaji spice logic that runs through northern Nigerian cooking, the same groundnut and pepper base used on suya, is visible in it.

Nigeria5 hr 35 minLaila

Boerewors, a coiled South African beef sausage seasoned with coriander, grilling over coals

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Boerewors is South Africa's sausage and one of the few foods in the world whose composition is set in law. Regulation requires at least 90 percent meat and caps the fat, which means anything sold under the name has to be the real thing. That is an unusual amount of legislative attention for a sausage and a reasonable measure of what it means to the country. It is coarsely minced beef, often with pork or lamb, seasoned with coriander seed, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves and allspice, bound with vinegar and filled into a natural casing in one continuous spiral. The coriander is the note people recognise. The spiral is not decorative: boerewors is grilled whole in its coil and cut only after cooking, because the casing holds the juices and cutting it first dries the sausage out. Its setting is the braai, and the braai is not a quick barbecue. It is an afternoon or an evening built around constructing a wood or charcoal fire and waiting for it to reach the right heat, during which a good deal of talking and drinking happens. When the braai master declares the fire ready, the meat takes half an hour and everything else has to be ready. For South Africans abroad, boerewors is the food most often named as the one they cannot get, which is why so many of them learn to make it.

South Africa2 hr 38 minFoodChef

Garantita

Garantita is a baked chickpea flour flan, sliced and eaten hot in a piece of baguette with cumin and harissa. It is Algerian street food in the most literal sense: sold from carts and small counters, cheap enough to be a default lunch, and eaten standing up. Its names change across the country. Garantita in Algiers, calentica in Oran, and karantita, karen or el hami in the west. In Algiers it also goes by el kebda el beida, the white liver, and it is described without embarrassment as the poor man's sandwich, which is a statement about price rather than quality. The origin story is a good one and should be treated as a story. It is said to come from Spanish soldiers at the fort of Santa Cruz in Oran in the 18th century, who ran out of provisions and had only chickpea flour, water and oil left, and whose cook combined them. The name is then traced to the Spanish caliente, meaning hot. The connection to Spanish chickpea cooking is real, since similar chickpea flour preparations exist across the western Mediterranean, but the specific tale of the soldiers is folklore rather than record. One rule is not negotiable: garantita is eaten hot, never cold.

AlgeriaBlessing

Kuli Kuli

Kuli kuli is a peanut snack eaten across Nigeria, Benin, northern Cameroon and Ghana, and it is one of the most widely recognised street foods in West Africa. It is made from peanuts alone, and the technique is what makes it: the oil is deliberately pressed out of the ground paste before the remaining solids are shaped and fried. That extraction is the point. Removing the oil leaves a dense, dry paste that fries into something genuinely crunchy rather than soft, and it also produces the frying oil as a by-product, so nothing is wasted. It is a piece of processing knowledge that predates industrial oil pressing and is still done by hand in Hausa communities in northern Nigeria, where the snack has its strongest association. It takes different shapes in different places: small sticks, rings, flat discs and irregular pieces are all standard, and the form varies by region and by seller. English names for it, groundnut cake and peanut snack among them, are approximations rather than translations. Kuli kuli is eaten on its own, mixed into garri with sugar and water, crumbled over salad, or served alongside fura and koko. Crushed to a powder it becomes the peanut component of suya spice, which is where most people outside the region encounter it without knowing.

Nigeria35 minBlessing

Droëwors

Droëwors is dried sausage, the air-cured relative of boerewors, and the name means dry sausage in Afrikaans. Thin sausages of beef or lamb with sheep tail fat are seasoned with coriander and spices and hung to dry until they are firm and dark, keeping without refrigeration. The technique belongs to the same tradition as biltong, and both come from the practical problem of preserving meat in a hot climate without cold storage. Dutch settlers brought curing and drying methods that met existing southern African practices of drying game, and coriander and vinegar became the signature of the local result. Thinness matters: droëwors is made in narrow casings precisely so it dries quickly and evenly, before spoilage can begin. Sheep tail fat is the traditional fat and it behaves differently from beef fat, staying stable rather than turning rancid through the drying period. The balance is delicate, since too little fat gives something unpleasantly dry and too much will not cure properly. Coriander is the constant seasoning, with cloves, nutmeg and black pepper in proportions that vary by household, and garlic or chilli appearing in some versions.

South Africa3 hrNympha

Ojojo, Nigerian fritters made from grated water yam with onion, pepper and crayfish

Ojojo (Yam Fritters)

Ojojo is a fritter made from grated water yam, and it belongs to the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. It is finger food and street food, sold from roadside stands and made at home on weekend mornings, and it follows more or less the same procedure as akara without the beans. Water yam, isu ewura, is what makes it work. It is wetter and more mucilaginous than the white yam used for pounding or frying, and grated it holds together in the oil without any flour or binder at all. That is the whole trick of the dish: no egg, no batter, nothing but yam, onion, pepper and crayfish, held together by the yam's own starch. The texture people are after is crisp on the outside and soft, almost fluffy, inside, and that balance is what separates a good ojojo from a dense one. Grating by hand is the traditional method and gives the most reliable result; a blender works but has to be used sparingly, since water yam breaks down very quickly and too much added water leaves a mixture that will not hold its shape in the pan. It shares its main ingredient with ikokore, the Ijebu water yam pottage, which is a different dish entirely.

Nigeria40 minCuisine228

Meni-Meniyong

Meni-meniyong is a Malian sesame and honey brittle, cut into rectangles and sold from stalls in every market in the country. It is three ingredients and a piece of temperature judgement, and it is eaten as a sweet with tea or simply as something to buy while the shopping is being done. Mali is a substantial sesame producer and the crop is one of its larger exports, so the seed is local rather than imported, and the brittle is one of the more direct expressions of that. The traditional form is rectangular, which is how it appears on market stalls, though the shape is a convention rather than a rule. Honey is what it should be made with. Sugar is increasingly substituted because it is cheaper, and the difference in flavour is noticeable to anyone who has had both. The temperature of the honey and butter mixture is the thing that decides whether it works: cooked too long and the brittle sets rock hard, not long enough and it stays as toffee rather than setting at all. A batch that will not firm up can be returned to the pan and cooked further, which makes it more forgiving than most sugar work.

Mali35 minFoodChef

Kelewele

Kelewele is Ghanaian spiced fried plantain: ripe plantain cut into cubes, tossed in a paste of ginger, chilli, garlic and spices, rested, then fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft. It is one of the country's best known street foods and is sold from stalls in the evening across Accra. The spicing is what distinguishes it, and it is worth being clear about this because the source is not. **Kelewele is not the same as aloco.** Aloco is the Ivorian name for plain fried ripe plantain, salted and nothing more, and the same dish is dodo in Nigeria and makemba in the Congo. Kelewele is marinated first, and the ginger and chilli are the entire reason it has its own name. Ginger, hot pepper and salt are the base, and nutmeg, garlic, onion and lemon appear in most versions. The rest matters: ten to twenty minutes lets the spice paste get into the cut faces of the plantain rather than sitting on the surface. It is eaten on its own, with roasted peanuts, or alongside rice and bean dishes, and it is sometimes described as vegetarian meat for the substance it lends a plate. Traditionally it is fried in red palm oil.

Ghana35 minDeborah

Fried Plantain

Fried plantain is thick slices of ripe plantain, lightly salted and fried until the edges caramelise, and it is eaten wherever plantain grows. Across West Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America and Southeast Asia, the same three ingredients produce essentially the same thing. Its names change with the border. In Nigeria it is dodo. In Côte d'Ivoire it is alloco. In Ghana the spiced version is kelewele, marinated in ginger and chilli before frying, which makes it a different dish rather than a different name. Those distinctions matter and are often blurred. Plantains are not bananas, though they look alike. They are starchier, they are cooked rather than eaten raw, and they can be used at any stage of ripeness for completely different results: green for chips and savoury dishes, ripe for this. What ripe plantain gives is the caramel-brown crust and the soft, sweet interior that the source describes as savoury-sweet, and it comes from the sugars that develop as the fruit blackens. No country is claimed here because the dish belongs to all of them.

Nigeria20 minBeatrice

Air Fryer Bananas

Ripe bananas sliced, optionally dusted with cinnamon, and cooked in an air fryer until the outsides colour and the insides go soft. It is a modern appliance recipe with no country attached and none implied, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged. It is a good use for bananas that have gone too soft to eat, which is the honest appeal of it. Air frying uses very little oil and the sugars in an overripe banana caramelise readily, so the result colours quickly without any added fat at all. Africa's fried banana and plantain traditions are quite different, and worth naming since the confusion is easy. Plantain is not banana: it is starchier, larger and cooked rather than eaten raw, and fried ripe plantain appears across the continent as dodo in Nigeria, alloco in Côte d'Ivoire and kelewele in Ghana, where it is spiced first. Rwandan banana beignets and Cameroonian banana fritters use actual bananas but in a batter. None of them is this, which is a plain appliance treatment of sliced fruit.

15 minDebby

Beef Nachos Supreme

Tortilla chips baked under seasoned beef and melted cheese, finished with raw onion, bell pepper and avocado. It is Tex-Mex and American, and it has an origin story that is unusually well documented for a snack food. In 1943, wives of American soldiers stationed at Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass, Texas, crossed into Piedras Negras, Mexico, on a shopping trip. They stopped at the Victory Club to eat and found the restaurant closed for the day. The maître d', Ignacio "El Nacho" Anaya, made something from what was left in the kitchen: tortillas, cheese and pickled jalapeños. The dish took his nickname. It sits in Worldwide Recipes under American, since nachos belong to Mexican, Tex-Mex and American cooking rather than to anything African. This particular version puts soy sauce in the beef seasoning, which is not conventional and points to a contemporary cook rather than a tradition. Africa's own layered snack dishes are different things: Nigerian gizdodo, South African bunny chow, Egyptian koshari. The technique worth knowing here is that the beef is seasoned and cooked before it goes on the chips, so the assembly only needs long enough to melt the cheese.

40 minCuisine228

Bhajias

Bhajias are thinly sliced potatoes coated in a spiced gram flour batter and fried until crisp, and they are an East African street snack, popular in Kenya and Tanzania. They arrived from India and have been made locally long enough to be entirely at home. Gram flour is what makes them work and what makes them naturally gluten free. Milled from chana dal, it fries into a crisp shell in a way wheat flour does not, and it carries an earthy, slightly nutty flavour of its own. Rice or corn flour goes in alongside for extra crispness. They belong to the same Indian inheritance in East Africa as chapati, samosas and pilau masala, brought by Indian merchants and labourers over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and absorbed completely into Kenyan and Tanzanian eating. What has changed locally is what goes with them: kachumbari, the tomato and onion salad, is the standard Kenyan accompaniment rather than the chutneys of India, though tamarind chutney and ketchup are both used. The batter should coat the back of a spoon, and it will thin as the potatoes go through it, so more flour is added as you go.

Kenya45 minNympha

Biltong

Biltong is air-dried cured meat from southern Africa, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia, cut into thick strips, cured in vinegar and spice, and hung to dry for days. It is made from beef and from game including ostrich and kudu. It is not beef jerky, and the difference is real. Jerky is usually cut thin against the grain, marinated in a sweet or soy-based liquid and dried with heat. Biltong is cut thick along the grain, cured with vinegar, salt and coriander, and dried in moving air without heat at all. The flavour and texture that result are quite different, and coriander is the spice that identifies biltong. Two things need saying about method. The first is safety: **this is a raw cured meat that is never cooked.** The 24-hour vinegar and salt cure and the drying are what preserve it, and both need to be done properly. The second is airflow. The meat hangs in a ventilated space with a fan blowing gently, never directly, because a fan pointed at the meat causes case hardening, where the outside seals before the inside has dried. Drying time varies with humidity and temperature, so it is tested by feel: any give means it is still wet inside.

South Africa30 minNympha

Taro Fries

Taro root cut into batons, seasoned and baked or fried until the outside crisps. No country is claimed, and none is implied by the recipe, which is a modern snack rather than a traditional dish. Taro is worth knowing about, because it is not a novelty ingredient anywhere except in Western supermarkets. It is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world, and across West and Central Africa it is a staple under the name cocoyam, the corm cooked and pounded, or worked into soups, and the leaves eaten as a vegetable. Nigerian ekpang nkwukwo and Ghanaian kontomire both belong to that tradition and are on this site. So while taro fries as a format are a contemporary invention, the vegetable itself is thoroughly African as well as Asian and Pacific. What makes it behave differently from potato in the pan is starch. Taro is denser and starchier than potato, with a mild nuttiness and a faint natural sweetness, which is why it crisps well and why the soaking step in the method is worth doing rather than skipping. The source's nutritional comparisons with potato have not been carried across. The relevant point for cooking is texture, and that is covered in the tips.

40 minDebby

Accra banana, Cameroonian fritters of banana and grated cassava, fried golden

Accra Banana (Cameroonian Banana and Cassava Fritters)

Overripe bananas mashed with grated cassava, seasoned with salt and deep-fried into small golden balls. In Cameroon it is street food sold nationwide, and it is also celebration food, a fixture at Christmas parties and weddings. What sets it apart from the many other West African banana fritters is the starch. Most versions bind mashed banana with wheat flour, rice flour or cornmeal; this one uses grated cassava, which is why it is also called accra cassava. Cassava is worked into an enormous number of forms in Cameroonian cooking, fufu, garri, bobolo sticks, and this is one more. The result is chewier and denser than a flour-based fritter, with the cassava's faint sourness cutting the sweetness of the fruit. Overripe bananas are not a compromise here, they are the requirement. A firm banana has neither the sweetness nor the softness the mixture needs, and the dish exists partly as a way of using fruit that has gone too far to eat out of hand. The usual accompaniment is African pepper sauce, which is worth taking seriously: the contrast between a sweet fried fritter and a fierce chilli sauce is the whole point of eating them together.

Cameroon45 minBlessing

Baked Plantain Loaf

Ripe plantains mashed to a paste, combined with rice flour and turmeric-infused oil, then baked in a loaf tin and sliced. The source places it in Ivory Coast, where plantain in every form is close to universal. It is worth being clear about what this is, because the title is misleading in two directions. It is not sliced plantain roasted in an oven, which is what most people mean by baked plantain. And the recipe uses rice flour as a binder and turmeric for colour, which makes it a plantain loaf or cake, closer in construction to a steamed pudding than to a side dish. The slug says load rather than loaf, which appears to be a typo in the original; the URL has been kept exactly as it is. One ingredient does not fit the stated origin. Chilli sambal is Indonesian and Malay, and it is not part of Ivorian cooking. It may be a substitution the contributor made for a local pepper paste, but the source does not say so, and rather than invent an explanation it has been flagged. The source's nutritional comparisons with potato have not been carried across. What matters for cooking is that ripe plantain is sweet and starchy, and that is what makes the loaf hold together.

Ivory Coast1 hr 30 minFoodChef

Catatos (Angolan Fried Caterpillars)

Catatos are dried caterpillars fried with garlic, onion, peppers and tomato. They are an Angolan dish, eaten with rice or funge and hot sauce, and they are entirely ordinary food there. Edible caterpillars are a serious food source across Central and Southern Africa, not a novelty. The mopane worm, the caterpillar of the emperor moth that feeds on mopane trees, supports a substantial harvesting and trading economy across Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa, and related species are gathered and dried across Angola and the Congo basin. They are seasonal, they are dried for storage, and they are traded in markets by the sack. The texture, when cooked properly, is soft inside with a crisp exterior, and the comparison people most often reach for is prawns. The dried caterpillars are rehydrated first, which is what the initial soaking is for. Africa has a long and unbroken tradition of eating insects that Europe and North America are only now rediscovering under the heading of alternative protein. It is worth stating plainly that this is established food with established techniques, not an experiment. The source names a specific seasoning cube brand, which has been described generically here.

Angola45 minNympha

Dukkah, an Egyptian blend of toasted hazelnuts, sesame and spices

Dukkah (Egyptian Nut and Spice Blend)

Dukkah is a dry Egyptian blend of toasted nuts, seeds and spices, pounded to a coarse crumb and eaten by dipping bread into olive oil and then into the dukkah. It is sold in cones of paper in Cairo's spice markets and made at home to family recipes. **It contains hazelnuts, which is not obvious from the name.** The name explains the texture. Duqqa comes from the Arabic for to pound, and the defining characteristic is that the mixture is crushed to a state that is neither a powder nor a paste, coarse enough to have texture in the mouth, fine enough to stick to oiled bread. Grind it too far and the nut oils release and it turns into a paste, which is the one thing it must not be. There is no fixed formula. Sesame, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper are near-universal; beyond that it varies by household and by vendor. A nineteenth-century account mentions marjoram, mint, za'atar and chickpeas; a 1978 report names nigella, millet flour and dried cheese; pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are more recent. The simplest market version is nothing but crushed mint, salt and pepper. Dry-toasting each element separately, as the method does, is not fussiness, nuts, sesame and whole spices all reach their best at different rates.

Egypt35 minFoodChef

Egusi Pudding

Ground melon seeds mixed with meat stock, fish and seasoning, then steamed in a water bath until set into a firm savoury pudding. It is Nigerian, and it is a different use of egusi from the soup that the seed is best known for. Egusi is the seed of a melon grown across West Africa for the seeds rather than the flesh. Shelled, the kernels are pale and mild, and they are around half oil and a third protein, which is what makes this dish work at all, ground egusi has enough fat and protein to set into a solid pudding when steamed, in the same way a custard sets. The construction is a direct relative of moi moi, the steamed bean pudding, and the technique is the same: a wet, seasoned mixture poured into moulds and cooked in a water bath, traditionally wrapped in plantain or banana leaves, now often in ramekins or foil. The leaves flavour the pudding as it steams, which foil does not. The bain-marie is not optional. Direct heat would set the outside and curdle the mixture before the middle cooked; surrounding it with water holds the temperature down and gives an even, moist set throughout. The source's nutritional discussion of egusi has not been carried across, though the oil and protein content is genuinely what makes the technique possible.

Nigeria1 hr 40 minBlessing

Honey Popcorn

Popcorn popped on the hob, coated in a honey and butter mixture and baked briefly so the coating sets crisp rather than staying sticky. No country is claimed. **This page had no recipe card in the source**, only an article about why honey popcorn is good. The ingredients and method below have been reconstructed from what that article describes, and that is flagged rather than hidden. The technique the article gets right is the baking step, and it is the difference between honey popcorn and sticky popcorn. Honey poured over popcorn stays tacky, because honey is around eighteen per cent water. Spreading the coated popcorn on a tray and baking it at a low temperature drives that water off, and the sugars set into a thin brittle shell. Ten to fifteen minutes at a low heat, turned once or twice, is enough. Its other observation is also true: honey helps salt adhere to the popcorn, which distributes the seasoning far more evenly than salt sprinkled onto dry kernels, most of which falls to the bottom of the bowl. Popcorn itself is indigenous to the Americas, maize was domesticated in Mexico and popping varieties are ancient there. Maize is now grown and eaten across Africa, but popcorn as a snack came the other way.

25 minDebby

Plantain Chips

Green plantain sliced paper-thin and fried until crisp. It is a snack made across West Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, and no single country is claimed for it. **One correction to the source, and it matters.** It says plantain chips are "also known as alloco, dodo, or chicharritas". Chicharritas is right, that is the Cuban and Puerto Rican name for exactly this. But alloco and dodo are not chips. Both are the West African dish of *ripe* plantain cut into thick pieces and fried soft: sweet, tender and yielding, the opposite of a crisp. Alloco is the Ivorian name and dodo the Nigerian one, and both have their own pages on this site. Conflating them with chips confuses two quite different foods. The distinction comes down to ripeness. Green plantain is starchy and barely sweet, and sliced thin it dries and crisps. Ripe plantain is full of sugar and moisture; sliced thin it burns before it crisps, and cut thick it fries soft. The source's own instructions are good, do not salt before frying, do not use overripe fruit, season while hot, but they are written as a list of tips rather than as a method. A method has been constructed.

35 minNympha

Recettes

Beef Nachos Supreme

Plantain Chips

Fried Plantain

Air Fryer Bananas

Meni-Meniyong

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

Kuli Kuli

Garantita

Catatos (Angolan Fried Caterpillars)

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Garantita

Kuli Kuli

Droëwors

Ojojo (Yam Fritters)

Meni-Meniyong

Kelewele

Fried Plantain

Air Fryer Bananas

Beef Nachos Supreme

Bhajias

Biltong

Taro Fries

Accra Banana (Cameroonian Banana and Cassava Fritters)

Baked Plantain Loaf

Catatos (Angolan Fried Caterpillars)

Dukkah (Egyptian Nut and Spice Blend)

Egusi Pudding

Honey Popcorn

Plantain Chips

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Beef Nachos Supreme

Meni-Meniyong

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

Kuli Kuli

Garantita

Catatos (Angolan Fried Caterpillars)

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Garantita

Kuli Kuli

Droëwors

Ojojo (Yam Fritters)

Meni-Meniyong

Kelewele

Fried Plantain

Air Fryer Bananas

Beef Nachos Supreme

Bhajias

Biltong

Taro Fries

Accra Banana (Cameroonian Banana and Cassava Fritters)

Baked Plantain Loaf

Catatos (Angolan Fried Caterpillars)

Dukkah (Egyptian Nut and Spice Blend)

Egusi Pudding

Honey Popcorn

Plantain Chips