Recettes

Edo Black Soup

Edo black soup takes its name from its colour, and the colour comes entirely from its leaves. Bitter leaf, scent leaf and uziza are ground together until they release a dark green so deep it reads as black in the bowl, and that grinding is the whole architecture of the dish: the leaves are the thickener, the flavour and the appearance at once. It belongs to Edo State in southern Nigeria and is particularly associated with the Esan people. Within Nigeria's enormous catalogue of soups, black soup is distinguished by how little palm oil it uses. Most southern Nigerian soups are built on a generous quantity of it; this one uses enough to round the leaves and no more, which leaves the bitterness and the aromatic sharpness of the greens in the foreground rather than behind a screen of oil. The three leaves are argued about. Some Edo cooks hold that two are sufficient, others that all three are necessary for balance, and the ratio between them is a matter of household preference. Black soup is eaten with fufu or pounded yam, and the pairing of a dense swallow against a soup this concentrated is the point of both.

Nigeria40 minTaiwo Oladapo

Nigerian Fisherman Soup

Fisherman soup belongs to Akwa Ibom and Cross River, the two Nigerian states where rivers run through the towns and villages and seafood is not an occasional purchase but the ordinary contents of the pot. Among the Efik it is called efere ndek iyak, and it is indigenous to them rather than adopted. What defines it is the range of what goes in. Fresh fish, prawns, snail, periwinkle, stockfish and dried fish appear together rather than in sequence, and the soup is a record of a single catch rather than a recipe with a fixed ingredient list. Periwinkle in particular, the small river snail sold in its shell across the south-south, is the ingredient outsiders notice and locals take for granted. The thickener is what makes the Efik version specific: pounded yam is added to the pot in lumps and dissolves into the broth, giving body without any flour or seed. Cocoyam does the same job in households that prefer it, and each thickener leaves its own trace on the taste. Every fishing culture in the world has arrived at a soup like this. This one is the version the Niger Delta arrived at.

Nigeria1 hr 5 minDebby

Igbo Yam Porridge

Yam is not simply a staple crop among the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria. It is the crop, tied to land, status and the agricultural calendar in a way no other food is, and the yam that goes into this porridge carries that weight into an ordinary weekday meal. Yam porridge is the most direct way to eat it. Slices are cooked until they begin to break down and thicken their own liquid, so the dish is both the yam and the sauce it makes. What marks the version out as Igbo rather than as one of the several other Nigerian yam pottages is the seasoning: ogiri, the fermented seasoning made from oil bean or melon seed, and uziza leaves, whose peppery aroma goes in at the very end. Palm oil supplies the colour and the richness, crayfish the savoury base. Ogiri is the ingredient that decides the dish. Its fermented depth is what separates an Igbo yam porridge from a Yoruba or Hausa preparation of the same root, and households that leave it out are making something else. The porridge is eaten at breakfast and as a light lunch, and it belongs to ordinary domestic cooking rather than to any occasion.

Nigeria30 minDebby

Semovita

Semovita is one of Nigeria's swallows: the family of smooth, firm starch preparations that are pinched off by hand, rolled between the fingers and used to lift soup from a bowl. The swallow is not a side dish. In Nigerian eating it is the vehicle and the soup is the flavour, and a meal is understood as the pairing of the two. It is made from semolina, the coarse milling of durum wheat, and it belongs to the wheat based end of the swallow spectrum rather than the cassava, yam or maize end. That places it alongside amala, eba, fufu, pounded yam and starch as one option among several, chosen by household preference and by what the soup is. Semovita is smoother and milder than most of the alternatives, which is a large part of its appeal. Its status is worth stating plainly: Semovita is a brand name that has become the general term for the product, in the way a number of household names have. The dish is Nigerian, industrially produced and comparatively recent, and it earned its place at the table on texture rather than on history. It is eaten with ogbono, okra, efo riro, egusi and every other Nigerian soup.

Nigeria17 minBlessing

Hausa Masa

Masa, also called waina, is a fermented rice cake from the Hausa of Northern Nigeria: small, round, spongy underneath and browned on the surface, cooked in a dedicated pan with shallow round wells. It belongs to the Hausa, one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, and it is among the dishes most closely identified with them. The fermentation is what makes it. Rice is soaked, ground with cooked rice, and left to rise overnight, and the mild sourness that develops is what separates masa from any other rice pancake. The holes that open across the surface as it cooks are the visible evidence of that ferment, and a masa without them has not been left long enough. It is breakfast food and snack food, sold from street stands and in markets across the north, and it appears at celebrations and family gatherings. What goes with it varies by household and by time of day: honey, groundnut oil, a peppery stew, or yaji, the same spice blend used on suya. Masa is a dish that has held its association with one people while spreading well beyond them, which is a fair description of how Hausa food generally has travelled through Nigeria.

Nigeria1 hrLaila

Peppered snail, a spicy Nigerian finger food of African giant snails in a scotch bonnet pepper sauce

Peppered Snail: Spicy Nigerian Finger Food

Peppered snail is party food in Nigeria. It arrives on a plate with cocktail sticks, it is eaten standing up with a drink in the other hand, and it belongs to celebrations, family gatherings, weekend events and the kind of occasion where people are moving between conversations rather than sitting down to a meal. The snails are African giant land snails, considerably larger than the garden snails eaten in Europe, and their texture is the whole point: firm, dense and chewy, closer to a scallop or a squid than to anything on a butcher's counter. They carry almost no flavour of their own, which is why they can take the heat they are given. The pepper sauce, built on scotch bonnet, onion, garlic and bell pepper, is what you actually taste, and the snail is what carries it. Snail is expensive in Nigeria relative to most proteins, which contributes to its place at events rather than at weekday meals. It is a dish that signals the occasion is worth something, and that association is as much a part of why it is served as the taste is.

Nigeria55 minDebby

Egusi Soup

Egusi soup is eaten across every region of Nigeria, every ethnic group and every economic class, which is a claim very few dishes anywhere can support. Its name changes with the language and the dish does not: miyan gushi in Hausa, ofe egusi in Igbo, efo elegusi in Yoruba. Its defining ingredient is ground egusi, the dried seed of a gourd related to the watermelon, milled to a meal that thickens and enriches the soup around it. The seeds are ground dry, without water, until the powder turns to a paste under the blade. Nothing else produces the particular nutty, faintly bitter depth that egusi gives, which is why the soup is named for the seed rather than for the meat or the greens that also go into it. There is no single method. The caking approach lets the ground seed set into soft curds in the stock; the frying approach starts the egusi in palm oil; the moulding approach forms it into balls that are eaten like meat. Ijebu cooks in Ogun State make it with no vegetables at all. Every one of these is egusi soup, and Nigerians will argue for their own without seriously disputing anyone else's. It is eaten with pounded yam, fufu, eba, amala or any swallow at hand.

Nigeria50 minFoodChef

Awara, a Northern Nigerian fried soy bean cake, served hot with pepper and sliced vegetables

How to Make Awara (Tofu, Soyabean Cake)

Awara is Northern Nigerian soy bean cake, and it is one of the clearest examples of an introduced crop becoming a genuinely local food. Soy beans are not indigenous to West Africa. Awara, as the Hausa make and eat it, is not found anywhere the crop came from. What separates awara from tofu is the frying. The process to the curd stage is the same: beans are soaked, ground, strained to a milk, heated, and set with an acid or a mineral coagulant, then pressed. Where East Asian tofu is usually finished at the press, awara is cut, seasoned and fried until the outside is golden and firm. That frying step is the dish, and it produces something with a texture and a flavour of its own. It is street food and snack food, sold ready made across the north because the process at home is long. Awara is served hot with ground pepper and oil, and increasingly with sliced fresh pepper, cabbage and cucumber alongside. It is eaten with pap or kunu at breakfast, and at any hour after that. It is also the north's most practical answer for anyone eating no meat, which is a role it has held far longer than the word vegetarian has been in common use in Nigeria.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minJennifer

Agidi, also called eko, a Nigerian set corn starch block wrapped in leaves and served with akara

Agidi or Eko

Agidi, called eko in Yoruba, is corn starch cooked to a firm set and left to cool into a smooth, sliceable block. It is faintly sour, cool to eat, and holds its shape on a plate, which makes it unusual among Nigerian starches, most of which are served hot and soft. It is one of the few Nigerian dishes that genuinely crosses every line in the country. North to south, across tribes, classes and religions, agidi turns up on the same table, which is a rarer thing in Nigerian food than the country's shared reputation for hospitality might suggest. It is eaten at breakfast with akara, the fried bean cake, and it is served alongside pepper soup, stew, banga, ogbono and egusi at other hours. It comes from the same process that produces ogi, the fermented corn pap, taken further. Where ogi is drunk, agidi is set. It is traditionally poured into uma or banana leaves, which give it its characteristic tapered shape and a faint green scent, and the leaves are the reason it appears in markets as a wrapped parcel rather than a slab. It is also commonly the first solid food given to Nigerian babies.

NigeriaBlessing

Buka stew, a Nigerian pepper stew with assorted meats cooked in bleached palm oil

Buka Stew With Assorted Meats (Obe Ata)

Buka stew is the pepper stew of western Nigeria, named for the places that made it famous. A buka is a small, cheap local eating house, and the buka is where working Lagos eats: fresh food, several dishes, no cooking at home, and no pretensions about any of it. The stew belongs to those kitchens and carries their signature. It is a pepper stew rather than a tomato stew, and the distinction is the whole recipe: tatashe and rodo dominate and tomato is kept back, which is the reverse of the everyday Nigerian stew ratio. The palm oil is bleached first, heated until it changes character, and that step produces the specific aroma that makes a buka identifiable from the street. Seasoning is kept minimal on purpose, because the peppers and the oil are doing the work. It is made with assorted meats, the cow parts that a household kitchen might skip and a buka never does, deep fried before they go into the pot. The women who run these kitchens are known collectively in Nigerian speech as Iya Basira, a name that stands in for all of them, and mama put is what the roadside version is called. Buka stew is eaten with white rice, beans, yam, fried plantain or agege bread.

Nigeria50 minJennifer

Tuwon dawa, a Northern Nigerian guinea corn swallow, served with miyan kuka baobab leaf soup

Tuwon Dawa Da Miyan Kuka Recipe

Tuwon dawa is guinea corn swallow, and its pairing with miyan kuka is one of the fixed combinations of Northern Nigerian eating. The tuwo is stiff, plain and pale; the soup is dark green, drawing and sharply flavoured. Neither is eaten without something like the other. Guinea corn is sorghum, and sorghum is the older grain of the Sahel. It was the staple of Northern Nigeria long before maize arrived from across the Atlantic, and it holds ground in the north that maize has taken elsewhere on the continent because it tolerates the heat and the short rains better. Tuwon dawa is what that grain becomes on a plate: milled, stirred into boiling water and worked to a smooth firm mass. The word tuwo covers a family rather than a single dish. Tuwon dawa is the guinea corn version, tuwon masara the maize one, tuwon shinkafa the rice one, and Hausa households distinguish between them by texture and by which soup they suit. Miyan kuka, made from ground baobab leaf, is the partner most associated with the guinea corn version, and the two together are among the most recognisable plates in the north.

NigeriaAmara

Miyan kuka, a Northern Nigerian baobab leaf soup, dark green and thick, served with tuwon shinkafa

Miyan Kuka (Baobab Leaves Soup)

Miyan kuka is Hausa soup made from powdered baobab leaves, and it is the one Northern Nigerian dish that people warn you about before they serve it. It is dark green, mucilaginous and thick, and it does not look like anything anyone finds appetising on first sight. Northerners are entirely aware of this and serve it anyway, because the taste is not in dispute even where the appearance is. Kuka is the dried and ground leaf of the baobab, sold as a dark green powder in markets across the north and instantly recognisable to anyone who has shopped there. The powder is whisked into a seasoned stock at the very end of cooking, which is where the soup gets both its body and its drawing texture. It is also called luru. Nigeria's soups map closely onto its peoples, and miyan kuka is the north's entry in that map: Yoruba households have ewedu, Igbo have ofe ugba, Edo have bitter leaf soup, the riverine south has fisherman soup. Miyan kuka is eaten with tuwon shinkafa, tuwon dawa or any swallow, and it is one of the dishes that is genuinely better on the second day, which is a claim its cooks make readily and which holds up.

Nigeria30 minBeatrice

Nsala soup, an Igbo white soup from eastern Nigeria made without palm oil and thickened with pounded yam

Nsala Soup (White Soup)

Ofe nsala is called white soup for a reason that will be obvious to anyone who knows Nigerian cooking: it contains no palm oil. Almost every soup of the Nigerian south is built on palm oil, and its absence here is not a simplification but the defining decision. What is left is a clear, pale, intensely aromatic broth in which every other ingredient has nowhere to hide. It belongs to the Igbo of eastern Nigeria and is particularly associated with Anambra State. Catfish is the traditional protein, and the pairing of fresh river fish with a clean broth is the point of the dish, though goat meat, old chicken and smoked turkey are all used. Its aromatic character comes from uziza seed, ehuru, ogiri and utazi leaf, the last of which is bitter and used in deliberately small quantities. The thickener is pounded yam, added to the broth in small amounts and dissolved. This is what gives nsala its body without any oil or seed, and it is the same technique used in fisherman soup further south. Nsala has a particular place in Igbo households as a soup made for new mothers and for people recovering, which is a role that follows from its lightness rather than being asserted on top of it.

Nigeria1 hr 47 minFoodChef

Amala

Amala is the swallow of the Yoruba southwest, and it is the darkest thing on a Nigerian table. Yam is peeled, cut, dried and milled into a flour called elubo, and the drying turns the white tuber brown. In boiling water that brown becomes near black, which is the colour amala is known by and which surprises people who expect a starch to be pale. Its home is Oyo State, and Ibadan in particular. The pairing of amala with ewedu, the jute leaf soup, is treated in Ibadan as something close to a civic institution, and the same seriousness attaches to it in Lagos, where you will not find a buka without it on the menu. Yoruba speakers make the comparison directly: amala and ewedu stand to an Ibadan person as akpu and ofe onugbu stand to an Igbo one. Three flours make three amala. Elubo isu, from yam, is the standard and gives the dark version. Lafun, from cassava, gives a white amala and is a different dish in practice. Elubo ogede, from unripe plantain, is lighter in colour and lower in starch. The technique is unforgiving in one specific way: the flour must go into water that has been taken off the heat, or it lumps, and lumps in amala are the fastest way to ruin it.

Nigeria20 minBeatrice

White amala with ilasa soup, a Yoruba pairing of cassava flour swallow and okra leaf soup

Preparation of White Amala and Ilasa Soup

White amala and ilasa soup is a Yoruba pairing from southwestern Nigeria, and both halves of it are local specialities rather than national staples. The amala is white because it is made from cassava flour, known as lafun, rather than the dried yam flour that gives the more familiar dark amala its colour. Ilasa is okra leaf soup, and it is the more particular of the two. It is made from the leaves of the okra plant rather than the pods, whisked with a cooking broom until the soup draws into a light green mass with a texture close to ewedu. Ground melon seed goes in first to give it body. Ilasa is closely associated with Igbo-Ora in Oyo State, where it is a town speciality, and it is far less widely eaten than ewedu or okra pod soup even within Yorubaland. That local specificity is the point of the dish. Nigeria's food is often described nationally, and the reality underneath it is that towns and even quarters hold their own preparations. A visitor to Igbo-Ora would be served ilasa; a visitor to Ibadan would be served ewedu. Both are Yoruba, both are eaten with amala, and neither substitutes for the other.

Nigeria1 hrTaiwo Oladapo

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

Nigerian pounded yam, a smooth elastic white yam swallow served with soup

Easy Ways To Make Nigerian Pounded Yam

Pounded yam is white yam softened and then beaten until it becomes smooth, sticky and elastic, and it sits at the top of the Nigerian swallow hierarchy. Nigerians will argue about most things in their food and generally will not argue about this: iyan is what you serve when the occasion matters. The pounding is the dish. The yam is softened, transferred hot to a mortar and worked with a pestle until the structure breaks down completely and the mass turns stretchy, and there is a technique to it that varies between ethnic groups and is learned rather than described. It is hard physical work, traditionally done by women though not exclusively, and the sound of it carries. It is called iyan by the Yoruba, and the same or a closely related preparation is foutou in Côte d'Ivoire, fufu in Togo and Benin, and yam fufu in Ghana, which makes it one of the most widely made yam products in West Africa. Its texture is what distinguishes it from the rest of the swallow family: smoother than eba, more elastic than amala, and considerably more work than either. Food processors, blenders and hand mixers have made it accessible on a weeknight, and pounded yam flour has made it possible with no yam at all, which purists note without much affecting what happens in most kitchens.

Nigeria30 minBeatrice

Tuwon masara, a Northern Nigerian maize swallow, moulded and served with soup

Tuwon Masara (Corn Meal Swallow) Recipe

Tuwon masara is maize swallow, and the name is Hausa and literal: tuwo for the cooked mass, masara for maize. It is one of the everyday staples of Northern Nigeria and among the plainest things the region cooks, which is entirely by design. It is the same family as tuwon dawa, made from guinea corn, and tuwon shinkafa, made from rice, and Hausa households treat the three as distinct rather than interchangeable. Masara gives a paler, milder, slightly sweeter tuwo than dawa, and it is the version most commonly compared to polenta by people trying to explain it. The comparison is fair on ingredient and misleading on treatment: polenta is seasoned and enriched, while tuwon masara is cooked in plain water with nothing added, because its job is to carry the soup rather than to compete with it. That is what the northern soups are for. Miyan wake made from beans, miyan taushe with pumpkin and groundnut, miyan zogale from moringa, miyan kuka from baobab leaf, miyan ridi from sesame. Tuwon masara goes with any of them, and with any Nigerian soup from further south. The corn is dried, ground to a medium consistency and sieved fine, and the resulting flour is stirred into boiling water and worked smooth.

NigeriaAmara

Dambu nama, Northern Nigerian dried and shredded spiced beef served as a snack

Dambu Nama (Shredded Meat)

Dambu nama is dried, shredded and fried beef from Northern Nigeria, fine and fibrous, closer to floss than to jerky. It is popular among the Hausa and Fulani, and its name is straightforward Hausa: dambu for the shredded form, nama for meat. It began as preservation. Fresh meat was scarce in the dry season, and drying beef in the sun and then pounding or shredding it into fine strands made it keep, made it light to carry, and concentrated it. Spices were added over time, which improved the flavour and did further preservative work. That the result is now eaten as a snack rather than as a store against a hard season is the usual arc for a preserved food that turned out to be good. Its texture is what makes it distinctive. Where kilishi, its northern neighbour in the dried meat category, stays as thin sheets, dambu nama is broken down into fine fibres, which changes entirely how it is eaten. It is taken by the pinch or the spoonful, scattered over rice or eaten straight, and it holds for a long time in a sealed container. It is also frequently sold ready made, since the drying and shredding are the slow parts.

Nigeria50 minLaila

Dambu, a Hausa steamed maize grits dish with shredded meat, groundnuts and spring onions

Dambu With Veggies

Dambu is a Hausa steamed grain dish made from grits rather than flour, and the distinction is what gives it its texture. Whole maize, wheat, sorghum or millet is cracked into coarse pieces called tsaki, moistened, and steamed until the grains separate into something that looks and eats a great deal like couscous. Which grain goes in decides which dambu you are making. Tsakin masara is maize grits and tsakin alkama is wheat, and Hausa households treat the versions as distinct in the same way they distinguish between the tuwo made from each grain. The steaming is done in two stages, with the additions going in halfway, which is what lets the groundnuts and vegetables perfume the grain rather than sit on top of it. In its plain form dambu is eaten with oil and chilli flakes and served alongside a soup such as miyan taushe, miyan kuka or a tomato stew. It can also be built out into a complete dish with meat, vegetables, oil and seasoning worked through it, which is what this version does and which Hausa cooks describe as making it jollof. The word dambu also names a shredded dried meat, dambu nama, which is a different preparation entirely despite the shared name.

Nigeria40 minMaryam

Goat Meat Pepper Soup

Pepper soup is a Nigerian category rather than a single recipe, and the goat meat version is among the most eaten of them. What holds the family together is the broth: clear, thin, aggressively hot and built on a specific spice blend rather than on tomato, oil or thickener. Nothing in a pepper soup is there for body. The spice blend is what makes it. Pepper soup spice varies by region and by household but is built around African nutmeg, ehuru, uziza seed and other aromatics, and it is the one ingredient that cannot be left out or approximated. Everything else in the bowl is variable: catfish in the Delta and Rivers, goat in the north, chicken as the widely available option, assorted meat where a household is feeding a crowd. Goat gives it a depth the lighter proteins do not. It also demands time, which is why this is not a weeknight soup unless the meat was cooked the night before or a pressure pot is involved. Pepper soup occupies a particular place in Nigerian life as restorative food, eaten when someone is unwell, cold or worn out at the end of a day, and it is served both as a first course and as a full meal with yam, plantain or rice.

Nigeria1 hr 35 minDebby

Gbegiri, a smooth Yoruba bean soup, served alongside ewedu and amala as abula

Gbegiri Soup (Beans Soup)

Gbegiri is Yoruba bean soup, smooth to the point of being velvety, pale orange from a small quantity of palm oil, and mild in a food culture that generally is not. It comes from southwestern Nigeria and it is rarely eaten alone. Its natural home is abula, the combination that puts gbegiri and ewedu together on a plate with amala and a pepper stew. The three components do different things: gbegiri brings body and mildness, ewedu brings the drawing green texture, and the stew brings heat. Ordering abula in an Ibadan or Lagos buka gets you all of it, and many people go to a buka specifically for the gbegiri. Making it well is a matter of texture rather than seasoning. Brown beans or black eyed beans are soaked so the skins can be slipped off, cooked until they collapse, and then either blended or worked through a sieve with an ijabe, the small cooking broom. Oyo State cooks will tell you the sieve is the authentic method and the blender is the concession, and both routes are used. The palm oil goes in for colour rather than flavour, and the quantity is deliberately small.

Nigeria35 minBlessing

Pate, a Northern Nigerian one pot grain porridge with kenaf leaf, meat and groundnut

Pate Hausa Food

Pate is a Northern Nigerian grain porridge, built on cracked corn or rice and loaded with vegetables, meat and groundnut until it stops being a porridge and becomes a full meal in one pot. It is particularly associated with Nasarawa and Kaduna states in the middle belt and north. What separates it from the many other grain dishes of the north is the vegetables. Kenaf leaf, known as rama, and sorrel leaf, known as yakuwa, go in alongside tomato, pepper and locust bean, and the greens are added late so they keep their colour and structure. Groundnut, as powder or paste, gives it body and a nutty depth that ties the whole pot together. It is household food in the most direct sense: a single pot, cheap ingredients, and enough of it to feed a family without anything else on the table. Pate is passed down rather than taught formally, and the composition shifts with what a household has and what the market held. Brisket bones and assorted meat go in for the stock as much as for the meat itself, which is why the pot ends up with more depth than its ingredient list suggests.

Nigeria45 minDebby

Ogi, a Nigerian fermented corn porridge served with akara bean cakes

Ogi (Nigerian Pap)

Ogi is fermented cereal porridge, sour, smooth and pale, and it is among the first things most Nigerians ever eat. It is called akamu in Igbo and pap in English, and it is made from maize, sorghum or millet steeped in water for up to three days, wet milled, sieved to remove the husks, and then fermented for several more days until it turns distinctly sour. That sourness is the point and it is what separates ogi from any other cereal porridge. It also does real work: fermentation makes the grain more digestible and gives ogi a probiotic character, which is a large part of why it has been the standard weaning food for Nigerian infants for generations and why it is given to people who are unwell or recovering. The same base goes in two directions. Thinned and cooked, it is the porridge eaten at breakfast with akara, moin moin, fried plantain or bread. Cooked much thicker and left to set, it becomes agidi or eko, sliced and eaten with pepper soup or stew. Across the region the names change without the thing changing much: koko in Ghana, uji in Kenya, where it is more often made from millet and sorghum. Three grains are used in Nigeria, and white corn, yellow corn and guinea corn each give a slightly different result.

Nigeria10 minDebby

Suya spice, the Nigerian yaji blend of ground roasted peanuts, cayenne, ginger and paprika

How to Make Suya Spice at Home (Nigerian Yaji)

Yaji is the spice blend that makes suya suya. Ground roasted groundnuts form its base, and that is what separates it from every other dry rub in the world: a spice mixture built on a nut rather than on seeds and chillies alone. Ginger, garlic, onion and paprika go in around it, with cayenne carrying the heat. It belongs to the Hausa of Northern Nigeria, and the recipes are held closely. Every suya vendor guards a proprietary arrangement of spices, and the specific balance is treated as commercial property rather than shared knowledge, which is why no two suya taste quite the same and why the exact composition is genuinely difficult to pin down. What is consistent is the groundnut, the aromatics and the heat. Its use extends well past the meat it is named for. Yaji is a marinade, a dry rub applied before grilling, and a finishing powder scattered over meat as it comes off the fire, and Nigerians use it on roasted vegetables, on fish, on chips, on plantain and on nuts. It is sold ready made at Nigerian grocers, and having a jar of it in the house is the single fastest route to making Nigerian food taste like itself.

Nigeria37 minDebby

Liver suya, Nigerian spiced liver kebabs coated in groundnut and pepper yaji and grilled on skewers

Liver Suya (Liver Kebab)

Suya is not restricted to any one cut, and liver is among the most common of the alternatives. Kidney and tripe appear too, and the offal versions are cheaper, cook faster and carry the yaji spice differently from beef, which is a large part of why they have their own following rather than being a fallback. Liver takes spice better than muscle meat does. It is soft, mineral and slightly sweet, and it absorbs the groundnut and pepper coating almost immediately rather than needing time to marinate. It also cooks in minutes, which suits the trade: a suya vendor working a roadside grill at night needs something that goes from raw to served while the customer waits. The name changes across West Africa without the thing changing much. Suya in Nigeria, soya in Cameroon, chinchinga or sitsinga in Ghana, and brochettes in the Francophone countries. The spice blend, yaji, is what holds it together, and it has no fixed recipe: the composition varies by vendor and by region, and each is guarded. What is consistent is ground groundnut, chilli, ginger and garlic, and a heat level that varies from cook to cook while the intensity of flavour does not.

Nigeria45 minCuisine228

Ogidigbo, an Igala corn pudding from Nigeria steamed in leaves and served warm

Ogidigbo (Igala Food)

Ogidigbo is an Igala dish of fresh corn, blended to a coarse paste with pepper, onion and crayfish, wrapped and steamed until it sets. It is structurally the same idea as moi moi, the Nigerian bean pudding, with corn standing in for the beans, and Igala cooks describe it in exactly those terms. The Igala are a people of Kogi State in central Nigeria, and their food is considerably less documented than that of the country's larger groups. Dishes like ogidigbo do not appear in the general Nigerian repertoire that gets exported, which makes recording it a more useful act than recording another version of jollof. It is everyday food rather than ceremonial food. The corn will not go as smooth as beans do, and Igala cooks say so plainly rather than treating it as a fault. That slightly grainy texture is what ogidigbo is. It is traditionally steamed in banana leaves, which contribute a green note that no other wrapper gives, though the practical alternatives now are the small plastic wraps used for moi moi or recycled tins. Palm oil is the recommended fat and gives the characteristic colour, with groundnut oil used by those who prefer it.

Nigeria1 hr 5 minTaiwo Oladapo

Alkubus

Alkubus is a Hausa steamed wheat bread from Northern Nigeria, plain by design and made to be eaten with something else. It is soft, faintly sour from the yeast, and it holds its shape well enough to be cut into rounds or wedges. Its role on the plate is the role bread plays across the north: the thing that carries the soup. Alkubus is eaten most often with miyan taushe, the pumpkin and groundnut soup, and it also goes with agushi soup, vegetable soup, cabbage stew or a plain tomato sauce. That pairing with miyan taushe is the one Northern Nigerians name first. There are two ways to make it and they produce different things. Baked in a greased pan and topped with carrot and onion, it is a loaf to be cut and eaten in slices. Portioned into wrappers and steamed over boiling water, it comes out softer and denser, closer to a dumpling, and that is the method the recipe here follows. Steaming rather than baking runs through a great deal of Hausa cooking, from dambu to danwake to masa, and alkubus belongs to that family more than it does to any oven tradition.

Nigeria25 minNympha

Nigerian Chicken Pepper Soup

Chicken pepper soup is the most widely made of Nigeria's pepper soups, largely because chicken is the most widely available protein. The structure is the same across the family: a thin, clear, aggressively spiced broth with nothing in it for body, where the flavour comes entirely from the spice blend and the stock the protein gives up. Ehuru is the ingredient that matters. Also called ehiri or calabash nutmeg, it is the aromatic seed that defines the pepper soup profile, and Nigerian cooks are emphatic that nothing substitutes for it. Uziza seed and uda, the negro pepper, complete the blend. Scent leaf, called nchanwu in Igbo, goes in at the very end for aroma. It occupies a specific place in Nigerian life beyond simply being eaten. Pepper soup is what people are given when they are unwell, when they have come in cold, or when they cannot face anything heavier, and it is a fixture of bars and restaurants across the country as much as of home kitchens. Hard chicken, meaning an older laying hen rather than a young broiler, is preferred for the deeper stock it produces, and it is eaten on its own or with rice, agidi, yam or unripe plantain.

NigeriaAmara

Moi moi, Nigerian steamed bean pudding wrapped in leaves with a boiled egg inside

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Moi moi is steamed bean pudding, and it is among the small group of Nigerian dishes that turn up everywhere: at breakfast, at parties, at weddings, in lunchboxes, beside jollof rice, and on its own. Black eyed peas or brown beans are soaked, peeled, blended with pepper and onion, seasoned, and steamed until they set. The peeling is what most people underestimate. The bean skins have to come off before blending, because they are what stands between a smooth moi moi and a gritty one, and the quality of the blend decides the texture of the finished dish more than any other single factor. Nigerian markets have heavy duty commercial mills for exactly this reason, and home blenders often cannot manage it. What it is steamed in changes the result and the name. Uma leaves, from Thaumatococcus daniellii, give the best flavour and cook fastest; banana leaves are the common alternative; aluminium foil and heatproof containers are the modern route. Nutmeg is the ingredient people leave out and then wonder why their moi moi does not taste like the one at the party. Egg, corned beef or bone marrow goes into the middle, and moi moi appears as a side to jollof and fried rice, as breakfast with pap or bread, and as a meal in itself.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minFoodChef

Amala lafun with ewedu soup, a Yoruba pairing of white cassava swallow and jute leaf soup

Amala Lafun and Ewedu Soup

Amala lafun is white amala, made from cassava flour rather than the dried yam flour that produces the dark version, and it is particularly associated with the Oyo people of southwestern Nigeria. Ewedu is jute leaf soup, whisked to a fine green draw. Together they are one of the most eaten combinations in Yorubaland. The buka is where most people first meet it. Nigerian bukas, the small cheap eating houses of the southwest, serve amala with ewedu and a pepper stew as a matter of course, and the three together are called abula. Ordering it is a single decision rather than three, and people have loyalties to particular bukas that last decades. Lafun behaves differently from black amala and needs handling to match. Where elubo from yam is added to water taken off the heat, lafun is thickened gradually with hot water and benefits from a brief steam on the stove afterwards, which is what gives it the smooth stretchy texture it should have. Ewedu is cooked with potash, which holds the green colour and helps the leaves break down, and is mashed with an ijabe, the cooking broom, into fine pieces rather than blended smooth. It is also eaten with okra soup and efo riro.

Nigeria50 minTaiwo Oladapo

Beetroot Rice

Beetroot rice is rice cooked with beetroot, which turns it a deep purple, and it is worth saying plainly that the source for this recipe is describing an Indian dish. Beetroot pulao is a well established South Indian preparation, and the source's own text discusses pulao, sona masuri rice and serving with raita, none of which are Nigerian references. That does not make the dish uninteresting, and there is a real Nigerian angle to it. Rice is the most eaten starch in urban Nigeria and cooked rice with stew is among the most common household meals in the country, so a coloured rice variation slots into an existing habit easily. Nigerian cooks have adopted vegetable rice dishes from a range of sources and made them ordinary, in the same way that spaghetti and coleslaw have become normal parts of the national table. What can be said with confidence is that this is a contemporary dish rather than an inherited one, and that its documented lineage runs to India rather than to Africa. The country field is left empty for that reason. Beetroot itself is not an African crop and is not part of any traditional African preparation on the continent. The recipe is included as what it is, with the attribution left open for a contributor to settle.

Nigeria40 minMaryam

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Ogidigbo (Igala Food)

Alkubus

Nigerian Chicken Pepper Soup

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Amala Lafun and Ewedu Soup

Beetroot Rice

Fried Yam

Otong Soup

Nigerian Chicken Stew

Nigerian Native Spaghetti