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

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

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

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

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

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

Yamarita

Yamarita is yam in an egg and flour coating, fried until the crust is crisp and the inside stays soft. It is a Nigerian treatment of the country's most important tuber, and it is straightforwardly a modern dish rather than an inherited one. The name gives away its logic. Yamarita is yam plus the ending of dundun ata or, by the more commonly repeated account, a play on the Yoruba way of naming a fried thing. Whatever the derivation, it belongs to the same family of inventions as yam chips and yam balls: ways of turning a starch that is usually eaten soft into something you can pick up with your fingers at a party. It sits alongside the older Nigerian yam preparations rather than replacing them. Pounded yam is ceremonial, yam porridge is domestic, yam with egg sauce is breakfast, and yamarita is what appears on a small chops platter next to puff puff and spring rolls. That is a real position in Nigerian eating even if it is a recent one, and the dish has spread well beyond the households that first made it.

Nigeria1 hr 5 minLaila

Nigerian Egg Roll

The Nigerian egg roll is a whole hard cooked egg wrapped in a slightly sweet dough and deep fried, and it has nothing to do with the Chinese egg roll beyond the name. The closest comparison is a Scotch egg, with dough in place of sausage meat, and the resemblance ends at the structure. It is street food and travel food. Egg rolls are sold from glass cases at bus stops, from hawkers' trays in traffic, and from the small kiosks that cluster around Lagos offices, and they exist because they solve a specific problem: something substantial, cheap and self contained that can be eaten with one hand in a stationary car. Anyone who has spent time in Lagos traffic understands the appeal without further explanation. The dough is what makes it Nigerian rather than generic. Flour, baking powder, sugar, margarine and nutmeg produce something between a bread and a cake, faintly sweet against the plain salted egg inside, and that sweet and savoury combination is a Nigerian snack signature that also runs through buns, puff puff and chin chin. It is eaten with tea, fruit juice or chilled zobo, and it is substantial enough that people eat it as breakfast or lunch rather than as a snack.

Nigeria50 minDebby

Fura Da Nono

Fura da nono is millet and milk, and the name says exactly that: fura is the millet ball, nono is the fermented milk. Spiced millet dough is rolled into balls, then mashed into soured milk and drunk from a bowl or a calabash. It is both a meal and a drink and Nigerians do not find that ambiguous. It belongs to the Sahel and to the peoples who move across it. The Fulani, the Hausa and the Zarma-Songhai all make it, and it is eaten across northern Nigeria, Niger and Ghana. Its logic is the logic of cattle keeping: milk that will not keep in the heat is soured deliberately, and millet that grows where little else does is what goes with it. The way it is sold explains its form. Vendors carry the fura balls and the nono separately and combine them to order, mashing the millet into the milk in front of the customer, which lets them sell two products from one stand and keeps the fura from going soggy before it is bought. In a hot climate, a cold, sour, filling drink that costs very little is a serious thing rather than a refreshment, and fura da nono has held its place in northern Nigerian life without needing to modernise.

Nigeria30 minDebby

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

Nigerian Amasi Spaghetti

This recipe puts amasi, the South African fermented milk, into a Nigerian style spaghetti sauce, and it is worth being clear that it is an invention rather than a dish with a history. Amasi belongs to the Nguni cattle keeping communities of southern Africa, where it is soured in a calabash and eaten over pap. Spaghetti belongs to urban Nigerian home cooking, where it has become one of the most eaten starches in the country. Putting them together is a pan African fusion of a kind that happens more and more as African food writing circulates across the continent, and there is nothing wrong with it. What there is not is any tradition behind it. No Nigerian household inherited this, and no South African one did either. What it does do is show what fermented milk brings to a tomato sauce, which is a real thing worth knowing. Amasi is thick, sharply sour and stable enough to go into a hot pan without curdling in the way fresh milk would, and it turns a tomato and mince sauce creamy and tangy at once. Buttermilk or plain yoghurt does the same job. The dish is presented here as what it is: a modern combination using an African ingredient in an unfamiliar way.

Nigeria1 hrLaila

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

Nigerian Chicken Stew

Nigerian stew is the base layer of the country's cooking, and the chicken version is the one made most often. Tomato, tatashe and scotch bonnet are blended and reduced hard in oil until the raw edge is gone and the oil separates and floats, then chicken that has already been simmered and fried goes in to finish. That reduction is the whole technique. A Nigerian stew that has not been cooked past the point where the oil rises tastes sharp and raw, and the difference between a good one and a poor one is almost entirely how long the cook was willing to stand over the pot. Everything else is adjustable: the pepper ratio, the protein, the thyme and curry that most households include. Its versatility is why it matters so much. The same pot of stew goes over white rice, with yam, with plantain, with bread, with beans, and it keeps in the fridge for the week and freezes well beyond that. Nigerian households make it in quantity for exactly that reason. Local chicken, the older hard birds, are preferred for flavour despite being tougher, and boiling before frying is the standard sequence, which also produces the broth that goes back into the stew.

Nigeria50 minDebby

Nigerian Native Spaghetti

Native spaghetti is what happens when Nigerian soup logic is applied to pasta, and the word native is doing precise work in the name. It signals that the dish is seasoned the way a Nigerian soup is seasoned rather than the way an Italian sauce is: palm oil instead of olive oil, crayfish instead of parmesan, dried and smoked fish, kpomo and stockfish instead of mince. The base is the same one that underpins a great deal of southern Nigerian cooking. Palm oil is heated, onions and a large quantity of pepper go in, ground crayfish follows, and then the dried and smoked proteins are added and allowed to soften into the sauce. Anyone who cooks Nigerian soups will recognise the sequence immediately. What is unusual is only what gets tossed through it at the end. It is a genuinely contemporary dish, not an inherited one, but it is a more interesting kind of new than a straightforward fusion. Rather than importing a foreign technique, it takes an imported ingredient and treats it entirely on Nigerian terms. Spaghetti has been eaten in Nigeria for decades and native spaghetti is one of the clearer signs that it has been absorbed rather than merely adopted. It is hot by design: ten scotch bonnets and ten shombo is a Nigerian quantity.

Nigeria50 minSobecooks

Ikokore, an Ijebu water yam pottage from Nigeria with beef, smoked fish and prawns in palm oil

Easiest Way to Make Ikokore Ijebu

Ikokore is the water yam pottage of the Ijebu people of Ogun State in southwestern Nigeria, and it belongs to them specifically rather than to Yorubaland generally. Ijebu people claim it firmly, and it is one of the dishes by which the subgroup is identified within a much larger ethnic group. Water yam is what makes it. It is a different species from the white yam used for pounded yam, wetter and more mucilaginous, and it cannot be substituted. Grated raw rather than cooked whole, it is dropped into hot stock in loose balls that set as they cook and turn translucent, which is the visual sign the dish is ready. Those balls are the structure of the pottage, and stirring too early destroys them. The other rule is generosity with protein. Ikokore takes beef, smoked fish, smoked prawns and whatever else is available, and Ijebu cooks are explicit that holding back is the wrong instinct. Palm oil, dried pepper and efirin, the scent leaf, finish it. It is a dish made for a household eating together rather than for a single portion, and the source describes it as a family affair, which is how it is generally cooked and eaten.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minTaiwo Oladapo

Nigerian Jollof Spaghetti

Jollof spaghetti applies the jollof method to pasta, and it is one of the most widely made contemporary dishes in Nigerian home kitchens. The pepper base is built exactly as it would be for rice, with blended tomato, tatashe and scotch bonnet reduced in oil with onion, ginger and garlic, and the spaghetti is finished in it so the strands take on the colour and the flavour rather than merely wearing it. Spaghetti arrived in Nigeria through mid twentieth century trade and has become one of the country's most eaten starches, particularly in urban households where it is quick and cheap. What Nigerians did with it is characteristic: rather than adopting Italian technique, they applied their own most important cooking method to it. The same has happened with jollof couscous, jollof penne and jollof noodles. It is weekday food rather than occasion food. Where jollof rice is the centrepiece of a party, jollof spaghetti is what gets made on a Tuesday, often with sausage or leftover chicken and whatever vegetables are in the house. It is served with eggs, fried plantain or chicken, and its status as a real Nigerian dish rather than a novelty is no longer in question among the people who eat it.

Nigeria30 minSobecooks

Ikokore, an Ijebu Nigerian pottage of grated water yam with palm oil, fish and meat

Ikokore - Nigerian Water Yam Pottage

Ikokore, also called ifokore, is the water yam pottage of the Ijebu people of Ogun State, and the specific yam is what makes it. Water yam, isu ewura in Yoruba, is wetter and more mucilaginous than the white yam used in ordinary yam porridge, and grated rather than cut it produces a texture somewhere between a pudding and a porridge that no other yam reproduces. The grating is the technique. Cut yam gives you yam porridge; grated water yam falls into the hot pot in irregular lumps that set as they cook, which is the texture Ijebu people are looking for and the reason the dish has its own name. Blending is possible but has to be done slowly, since a fine puree loses the lumps entirely. It is community food. Ikokore was made at gatherings, festivals and ceremonies, prepared collectively by women working together, and it carries that association still. Ijebu people are direct about its status, and the pairing they will name without hesitation is ikokore with cold eba. It also improves overnight, which is a claim the source makes and which holds true for most Nigerian pottages.

Nigeria1 hrDebby

Eko or agidi, sliced Nigerian fermented corn pudding, served with efo riro vegetable stew

Eko (Agidi) and Efo Riro

Eko and efo riro is a Yoruba pairing, and each half is a substantial dish in its own right. Eko, also called agidi, is a firm pudding set from fermented corn starch, sliced and eaten cold or at room temperature. Efo riro is the Yoruba vegetable stew, built on palm oil, blended pepper, locust beans and leafy greens with assorted meat and smoked fish through it. The contrast is the point. Eko is cool, firm and slightly sour from the fermentation, with a clean corn flavour and almost nothing else going on. Efo riro is hot, oily, salty and densely flavoured. Putting them together works in the way that plain rice and a heavy curry work, and neither is quite right without the other. Eko is traditionally set in wrapped leaves, which give it its characteristic shape and a faint aroma the greased mould does not reproduce. It is sold that way across southwestern Nigeria, most often alongside akara or moin moin at breakfast, though the pairing with efo riro makes it an evening meal. Riro means stirred, and the name describes the technique: the vegetables are stirred into the finished stew base rather than cooked in it, so they hold their texture.

Nigeria1 hrTaiwo Oladapo

Tuwo shinkafa, smooth balls of Hausa rice swallow from northern Nigeria

Tuwo Shinkafa (Hausa Rice Swallow)

Tuwo shinkafa is the rice swallow of northern Nigeria and Niger, made by cooking soft short grain rice past the point most cooks would stop, then mashing it against the side of the pot until the grains give up their structure and come together as a smooth dough. Tuwo is a Hausa word meaning stiff porridge, and it names a whole family rather than one dish. Tuwo masara is made from maize, tuwo dawa from guinea corn or sorghum, and tuwo alkama from wheat. Shinkafa is rice, and it is the version most associated with Hausa cooking and the one most often served to guests. What it is eaten with matters as much as what it is. Northern Nigerian soups are its natural partners: miyan taushe made with pumpkin, miyan kuka from powdered baobab leaf, miyan wake from beans, and okra and egusi alongside them. In Ghana the same preparation is called omo tuo and goes with groundnut soup or palm nut soup, which is a different set of flavours around an identical technique. The rice variety is the one thing that cannot be compromised: it has to be soft and sticky, and long grain will not do it.

Nigeria40 minDebby

Asun, Nigerian smoked goat meat tossed with habanero, onions and bell peppers

Asun (Peppered Goat Meat)

Asun is smoked or roasted goat meat tossed through a fierce pepper and onion mix, and it is one of the fixtures of the Nigerian owambe, the large Yoruba party that runs on food and music. It arrives as part of the small chops circuit, alongside puff puff and peppered snails, and it disappears fast. Goat is the whole point. Yoruba speakers call it ogunfe, and it carries a stronger, more mineral flavour than beef that stands up to the quantity of scotch bonnet involved. The meat is simmered until tender before it ever meets fire, then roasted or grilled to dry the surface and pick up smoke, and only then does it go into the pepper mix. Skipping the first stage is the most common way it goes wrong, since goat that has not been softened stays tough no matter how long it spends in the pan. Sliced onions and bell peppers go in for sweetness against the heat rather than for bulk. Whether asun is a starter or something else is a matter people disagree about: the source archive files it under both appetizer and dessert, and Nigerians treat it as a small chop, a side to jollof rice, or a main course with plantain, depending entirely on the occasion.

Nigeria1 hr 15 minDebby

Afia efere, the Efik white soup of Cross River State flavoured with uyayak pod

Afia Efere (White Soup)

Afia efere is the white soup of the Efik people of Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria, and the name is misleading in the way that most people notice first. It is not white. The uyayak pod that flavours it turns the broth a rich brown, and the name refers to the absence of palm oil rather than to the colour of the finished soup. That absence is the defining feature. Almost every soup in southern Nigeria is built on palm oil, and afia efere is not, which leaves the uyayak, crayfish and uda to carry it without competition. Uyayak, also called Aidan fruit, is a long dark pod with a sharp aromatic flavour found in few other dishes, and it is the ingredient the soup stands or falls on. Uda, the negro pepper, works alongside it. It is close to ofe nsala, the Igbo white soup, and the two are often confused. Both are palm oil free and both are thickened with pounded yam stirred into the broth. Ofe nsala is the more complex of the two, carrying utazi leaves and ogiri seeds that afia efere does without, and it contains no uyayak at all. They are neighbours rather than the same dish, and Efik and Igbo cooks are clear about the difference.

Nigeria50 minTaiwo Oladapo

African salad, the Igbo dish of shredded cassava abacha with fermented ugba and palm oil

African Salad (Abacha and Ugba)

African salad is the Igbo dish of abacha and ugba, and it is a salad only in the loosest sense. Abacha is cassava that has been cooked, shredded on a special grater, soaked overnight, rinsed and dried in the sun. Ugba is fermented oil bean seed, cooked for hours, sliced, rinsed and left to ferment. Neither is cooked when the dish is assembled. That is the striking thing about it: almost the entire preparation happens off the stove. Palm oil is turned into a thick yellow paste by working it with potash solution, and everything else is folded into that paste in sequence. The order matters, and Igbo cooks are firm about it, because the components will not distribute evenly if they all go in together. It belongs to ceremony. At an Igbo wedding, abacha is reserved for the important guests, and it is served with chilled palm wine, which is the pairing anyone from the region will name. Despite being filling enough to be a meal, it is treated as a snack rather than a main course. It can be served cold or warmed briefly, and the choice between the two is a matter of household preference rather than correctness.

Nigeria30 minFoodChef

Nigerian fried rice with diced carrot, green beans, bell pepper and liver

Easy Nigerian Fried Rice

Nigerian fried rice is party food, and it sits beside jollof rice on the table at every celebration where both appear. Where jollof is red and built on a cooked tomato and pepper base, fried rice is pale gold, coloured by curry powder rather than tomato, and studded with diced vegetables and liver. It is a Nigerian dish rather than a Chinese one, despite the shared name and the soy and oyster sauces that have entered the modern version. The rice is parboiled in seasoned meat stock so it takes flavour before it is ever fried, which is the opposite order to Chinese fried rice, and the vegetables go in raw at the end so they keep their bite and colour. Fried rice spice, sold as its own blend in Nigerian markets, is the thing to look for; curry powder is a different profile and contributors are firm on the point. Liver is the traditional protein and the part most often left out abroad. Fried until firm and diced small, it gives a mineral depth that nothing else in the dish supplies. Shrimp, chicken and beef all appear alongside or instead. It is served with fried plantain, moi moi, coleslaw and chicken, and at a Nigerian party it is served with jollof rather than instead of it.

Nigeria50 minAmako Blessing

Ewa Agoyin

Ewa agoyin is beans cooked to complete softness, served with a dark sauce of caramelised onion, pepper and palm oil poured over the top. It is Lagos street food above all, eaten in the morning and through the afternoon, and it is almost always served with bread. The name records where it came from. Ewa is beans in Yoruba, and Agoyin refers to the Aganyin people of the Benin Republic, whose sellers and hawkers popularised the dish in Nigeria. It was originally ewa aganyin, and the shortened form took over because of how the word sounds when spoken quickly. Nigerians also use Agoyin more loosely for Beninese and Togolese people generally. Some sellers call it simply ewa g. The sauce is where the work is. Palm oil is heated until it clears, onions are caramelised in it until very dark, and parboiled tomato purée, ground pepper and crayfish go in after. That deep caramelisation is what makes the sauce black rather than red, and it cannot be hurried. The beans themselves are cooked until they collapse, which is the opposite of how beans are usually treated, and the combination of the soft plain beans with the intense sauce is the entire point.

Nigeria1 hr 20 minFoodChef

Okpa

Okpa is a steamed pudding of Bambara nut flour and palm oil, wrapped and cooked in boiling water until it sets solid. It is the street food of Enugu, and anyone travelling into the city from Onitsha or Lagos will hear the sellers calling okpa di oku, meaning okpa is hot. Bambara groundnut is an indigenous African legume, grown long before peanuts arrived from South America, and it is the same nut behind several dishes across the continent. It is known as jugo beans in southern Africa, and okpa itself is also called igba and ntucha. The seeds come in small pods and are extremely hard, so hard that domestic grinders cannot handle them and only industrial mills will do the job. That is why okpa flour is bought rather than made. Restraint is the principle. Bambara nuts have a good flavour of their own, and the source is emphatic that adding onions and crayfish ruins it, which is unusual advice in Nigerian cooking where those two go into almost everything. Palm oil, salt, stock cubes and pepper are the whole seasoning. The mixture looks alarmingly watery when mixed, and that is correct. The ratio in the recipe gives the right texture, and using less water produces something rock hard.

Nigeria1 hr 25 minFoodChef

Beans Porridge

Beans porridge is one of the most-eaten dishes in Nigerian homes: beans cooked soft, then finished in a palm oil base with blended pepper, smoked fish, crayfish and ugwu. It is weekday food, made in quantity, and it is as likely to appear at breakfast as at dinner. The palm oil base is what separates it from plain cooked beans. Onion is softened in the oil, blended tomato and pepper go in and are cooked until the oil separates out, and only then do the beans join. That separation is the marker Nigerian cooks watch for: it means the raw tomato has cooked off and the base is ready. Ugwu, the fluted pumpkin leaf, goes in at the end and needs only a few minutes to wilt. It is one of the most widely used greens in southern Nigeria and gives the dish its colour and a mild, slightly nutty flavour. Fried ripe plantain is the standard partner, and the sweetness against the savoury beans is why that pairing has stuck. Yam and rice also work. Despite the beans and vegetables, this is not a vegetarian dish as written: the crayfish and smoked fish are doing much of the seasoning.

Nigeria1 hr 10 minSobecooks

Ayamase, the Nigerian green pepper stew with assorted meat and boiled eggs

Ayamase Sauce

Ayamase is the green pepper stew of southwestern Nigeria, known widely as designer stew, and it is the sibling of ofada stew rather than a version of it. The difference is the pepper: ofada uses red bell peppers and tomatoes and comes out red; ayamase uses green bell peppers and unripe scotch bonnets and comes out dark green. Bleached palm oil is what defines the technique. The oil is heated until it stops being red and turns clear, which changes its flavour entirely, removing the sweetness and leaving something deeper and more savoury. It is a step that fills a kitchen with smoke and it cannot be skipped without producing a different sauce. The rest is southwestern Nigerian cooking at full strength: locust beans for fermented depth, ground crayfish, assorted meat including tripe and cow skin, and whole hard eggs that sit in the sauce and take on its flavour. The sign that it is finished is the oil floating to the surface. It is served with ofada rice, the local short-grain rice, or with white rice or rice and beans, and it appears at parties and in restaurants as much as at home.

Nigeria50 minCook with Sandy

Banga Rice

Banga rice is rice cooked in palm fruit extract, and it belongs to the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. Banga is the name for the juice pressed from palm nut fruit, and cooking parboiled rice in it rather than in water or stock is what makes this dish rather than a variation on jollof. Palm fruit extract is a foundation across the Niger Delta and the south east and south west. Almost every group has built a soup on it under its own name: ofe akwu among the Igbo, abak atama in Akwa Ibom, obe eyin in Yoruba, oghwoamiedi among the Urhobo, izuwoibiedi for the Isoko. The herbs and spices are what separate them from one another. Texture is what this is judged on. It must be extremely soft, since it is absorbing the flavours of everything around it, and neither dry nor mushy. Its creaminess comes entirely from the palm fruit extract. Leftover banga soup or ofe akwu works perfectly well as the base, which is much of how it gets made at home, and tinned palm fruit concentrate is a legitimate shortcut. Scent leaf goes in near the end, as it does in most southern Nigerian rice dishes.

Nigeria1 hr 20 minNympha

Ekpang nkwukwo, Nigerian cocoyam parcels wrapped in leaves with periwinkles

Ekpang Nkwukwo (Cocoyam Wrapped in Leaves)

Ekpang nkwukwo is grated cocoyam wrapped in cocoyam leaves, packed into a pot lined with palm oil and cooked slowly with periwinkles, meat, fish and crayfish until the parcels set into soft, cohesive bundles. It belongs to the Efik and Ibibio of Cross River and Akwa Ibom in southeastern Nigeria, and it is dish for special occasions rather than everyday food. The reason it is occasion food is the labour. Every single parcel is wrapped by hand, one small scoop of grated cocoyam at a time, and a pot holds a great many. There is no shortcut and no machine, which is exactly why it signals effort and hospitality when it appears. Two details in the method are structural rather than decorative. The pot is rubbed generously with palm oil before anything goes in, which stops the parcels catching and burning on the base. And unshelled periwinkles are laid at the bottom as a physical layer between the pot and the food, which is a neat piece of traditional engineering. The dish crosses the border. It is called ekwang in Cameroon, where it is particularly associated with the Bakweri, and the two versions are essentially the same preparation under two names. The source's health claims about cocoyam have not been carried across.

Nigeria1 hr 20 minFoodChef

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