Recettes

Ablo, a steamed rice cake from Benin and Togo, served warm alongside a stew

No Corn Starch Rice Cakes (Ablo)

Ablo, also written abolo, is a steamed rice cake with a light, springy crumb, eaten across the coastal stretch of West Africa where Togo, Benin, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire meet. It is white, faintly sweet, faintly sour, and built to be torn and dipped. Its texture is the result of fermentation rather than of any raising agent alone. Rice is soaked, ground and left to rise, and the sourness that develops in that time is the difference between an ablo and a plain steamed dumpling. In Benin the cakes are steamed wrapped in banana leaf bundles, which leaves a green, faintly grassy note that a metal mould cannot give. Ablo occupies the position that bread occupies elsewhere: it is the mild thing on the plate that the sauce is for. It is eaten with thick stews and grilled fish, and it belongs equally to a party table and a home meal. In a food culture where most starches are pounded or stirred, a steamed and leavened cake is a distinct approach, and one that Togolese, Beninese, Ghanaian and Ivorian cooks share across their borders.

Benin2 hr 10 minAnthonyJ

Ghana Jollof Rice

Ghanaian jollof rice is defined against its rivals as much as on its own terms, and Ghanaians are entirely comfortable with that. It is a tomato based rice, aromatic rather than fiery, seasoned with curry powder, garlic and ginger, and cooked in basmati. Every one of those choices is a position in an argument. The rice is the clearest one. Ghanaians use basmati, which stays separate and perfumed and carries the aromatics; Nigerians use long grain parboiled, which absorbs the tomato base and takes on the smoke. Neither is a mistake. They produce genuinely different dishes that share a name, and the preference in each country is consistent enough to be a national marker. The jollof rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria is the continent's most famous culinary argument, conducted on social media, at dinner tables and in the press with an intensity that has very little to do with rice and a great deal to do with two confident countries enjoying themselves. The honest position on the origin is that the dish descends from the Senegambian rice tradition rather than from either country. The honest position on which is better is that both are right within their own tradition, and Ghanaians serve theirs at every social gathering and celebration that matters.

Ghana1 hr 20 minDebby

Ivorian Jollof Rice

Ivorian jollof is the Francophone entry in a dish the Anglophone countries argue about most loudly. It carries the same tomato base as its neighbours and seasons it with curry powder, thyme, ginger, garlic and scotch bonnet, and it commonly cooks the cabbage and carrots in the pot with the rice rather than serving them separately. Côte d'Ivoire calls it jollof, and the wider Francophone West African name for the family is riz gras, meaning fat rice. That name describes the method accurately: rice cooked in an oil rich tomato broth until it takes all of it up. In Côte d'Ivoire the dish belongs to the same occasions it does everywhere else in the region, which is to say weddings, funerals, naming ceremonies and any gathering that expects to feed a crowd from one pot. The origin is not seriously disputed by anyone who looks into it. Jollof descends from the rice tradition of the Senegambian coast, associated with the Jolof polity that held parts of present day Senegal and the Gambia between roughly 1350 and 1549, in a region documented as the Rice Coast for the grains grown along the Senegal River. One account traces its spread through the Djula traders of the Mali empire. Neither Nigeria nor Ghana invented it, which neither country lets get in the way of the argument.

Côte d'Ivoire1 hrCuisine228

Waakye

Waakye is rice and beans cooked together with dried millet or sorghum stalk leaves, which leach a deep reddish brown into the grain and give the dish both its colour and its name. It is Ghana's most loved street breakfast, and in Accra and Kumasi the waakye seller is a neighbourhood institution whose location is known, whose quality is debated and whose loyalty is genuinely held. Sellers begin before dawn and often sell out by mid morning. The dish is bought wrapped in leaves and assembled to the customer's specification from a wide spread of accompaniments: shito, the dark Ghanaian pepper and fish sauce, gari, egg, spaghetti known as talia, fried plantain, avocado, salad, stew and fried fish or meat. A full waakye plate is substantial enough to carry someone through a working day, which is precisely what it is for. The waakye leaf is the ingredient that cannot be substituted. It is the dried leaf sheath of a West African sorghum, called poporo oka in Yoruba and adako in Togo, and it functions as a colourant rather than a flavouring, with the quantity used determining how deep the colour runs. Black eyed beans are traditional and jasmine rice is the Ghanaian preference. The dish is eaten across West Africa under other names, as wanke in Lagos and ayimolou in Togo.

Ghana1 hr 15 minCuisine228

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

Omo tuo, Ghanaian rice balls served warm alongside groundnut soup

Rice Balls (Omo Tuo)

Omo tuo is the Ghanaian rice ball, made by cooking soft rice well past the point of doneness and then mashing it until the grains give up their structure and bind into a smooth dough that can be shaped by hand. It is Sunday food. Omo tuo is strongly associated with Sunday lunch in Ghanaian households and with the soups that accompany it, principally nkatenkwan, the peanut soup, and abenkwan, the palm nut soup. It is eaten by pinching off a piece of the ball and using it to scoop, and it is not eaten with cutlery. The same preparation exists in northern Nigeria and Niger as tuwo shinkafa, where it belongs to the Hausa tuwo family of grain swallows and is eaten with an entirely different set of soups: miyan kuka, miyan taushe, miyan wake. The technique is effectively identical and the two are best understood as one method with two national traditions around it. What separates them is what goes beside them on the plate, and in Ghana that means groundnut and palm nut soup rather than baobab leaf and pumpkin.

Ghana45 minBlessing

Biryani

Biryani is a layered rice dish of Persian and South Asian origin that has been part of South African cooking for well over a century, and the South African versions are now traditions in their own right. The name traces to Persian, birinj biriyan, fried rice, and the dish as it is recognised today developed among Muslim communities in the Indian subcontinent. It reached South Africa with indentured labourers brought to Natal from India from the 1860s, and separately through the Cape Malay community, whose roots lie in the people brought from the Indonesian archipelago and South Asia under Dutch colonial rule. What emerged is distinct. Durban biryani, the best known, is typically cooked with lentils and potatoes layered through the rice, and it is spiced with the chilli-forward masalas that also produced bunny chow. Cape Malay versions run sweeter, using cinnamon, cardamom and sometimes raisins, reflecting a different spice tradition entirely. The method is what makes it biryani rather than a spiced rice. Meat and rice are partly cooked separately, then layered and finished together under a sealed lid so the steam carries the spice up through the grains, dum, in the South Asian term. It is celebration food in South Africa as much as in South Asia: Eid, weddings, and large family gatherings.

South AfricaNympha

Caribbean Rice

Caribbean rice is a one-pot rice dish with meat, vegetables and fried ripe plantain, coloured and sweetened with browning. It is Caribbean rather than African, and the source is clear that it is neither jollof nor fried rice but something else again. The African connection is real and historical. Caribbean cooking is a mixture of African, Creole, Amerindian, European, Latin American, South Asian, Middle Eastern and Chinese influences, layered over centuries by the people who arrived there, many of them forcibly. Rice cooked in one pot with meat and seasoning is a technique that came across the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans, and it is the same lineage that produced jollof. Browning is the ingredient that marks it out. It is a dark caramelised sugar syrup used across the Caribbean for colour and a faint bitterness, and it is what gives the rice its deep brown appearance. The Spanish contribution during and after 1493 brought coconut, chickpeas, coriander, aubergine, onion and garlic into the region's cooking, and most Caribbean rice dishes carry some of that. This entry sits in the Worldwide Recipes collection with its URL unchanged.

2 hr 5 minNympha

Jollof Rice

Jollof rice is the best-known dish in West Africa and the one most argued over. Rice is cooked in a base of blended tomato, red pepper, onion and chilli until it takes the colour and flavour all the way through, not rice with sauce on it, but rice that has become the sauce. Its origins are traced to the Senegambian region and the Wolof, or Jolof, Empire, which from the fourteenth century covered parts of present-day Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania, and where rice was grown. The ancestor dish is thiéboudienne, the Senegalese one-pot of rice, fish and vegetables. The name jollof carries the empire's own name with it. From there it spread and diverged. Nigerian jollof leans on long-grain rice and a heavily reduced pepper base, often with a deliberate smokiness from the bottom of the pot. Ghanaian jollof commonly uses aromatic rice and a different spice balance. Senegalese thieboudienne remains its own dish. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Togo and the Gambia all have versions. The rivalry between the Nigerian and Ghanaian claims is genuine, loud and largely affectionate, and it has done more to carry the dish internationally than any amount of promotion. Whatever the version, it is not a side dish. Jollof is the centre of the table.

Nigeria1 hrBeatrice

Nigerian Native Jollof Rice

Native jollof is a distinct dish from the jollof most people know, and the difference is palm oil. Where party jollof is built on a reduced tomato and pepper base and comes out orange-red, native jollof is built on palm oil with locust beans, dried fish, crayfish and cow skin, and comes out darker, heavier and far more savoury. It belongs to southeastern Nigeria and has its own names there. Among the Efik it is iwuk edesi, sometimes simply called palm oil rice. Igbo households make closely related versions. It is not a variation on party jollof so much as a separate tradition that happens to share the word. The ingredients that define it are the ones that define southeastern cooking generally: iru or locust beans for their fermented depth, ground crayfish, dried and smoked fish, and ponmo, the cow skin cooked until soft. Scent leaf, the Nigerian basil, goes in at the very end. There is no tomato at all in this version, which is what separates it most sharply from what people expect when they hear jollof, and it is served with grilled local chicken rather than the fried chicken that accompanies the party version.

Nigeria1 hr 10 minChopsity.

Coconut Fried Rice

Coconut fried rice is rice cooked in coconut milk and stock rather than water, then combined with fried vegetables. It is made across an enormous range of countries, from the Indian subcontinent through Southeast Asia to South and Central America, East and West Africa, the Caribbean and Oceania, which is why no single country is claimed for it. In Nigeria it is a party dish, and the version here reads that way: turmeric for colour, cabbage and mixed vegetables, habanero, and hotdog sausages as an optional addition, which is a distinctly Nigerian party-food touch. It sits alongside jollof rice and fried rice on the same table. The name is slightly misleading, and the source acknowledges it. This is rice cooked in coconut milk rather than fried rice in the strict sense: the coconut milk and stock are absorbed during cooking, and the vegetables are fried separately and folded through at the end. That order matters. Cooking the rice in the coconut milk is what gets the flavour into every grain, and frying the vegetables separately keeps them from going soft in the liquid. The frozen vegetables need to be thawed and patted dry, or their water thins the whole thing.

Nigeria1 hrCuisine228

Coconut rice cooked in a rice cooker with peas and diced carrots

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

Coconut rice made in a rice cooker: rinsed long grain rice, a tin of coconut milk, water, oil and salt, with peas and carrots folded in at the end. No country is named and the dish belongs to many, which is why none is claimed here. Coconut rice is genuinely pan-regional. It is made across West Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, South America and Oceania, and it takes a different form in each: Nigerian coconut rice carries pepper and vegetables, Jamaican rice and peas uses kidney beans and thyme, Thai khao man gai poaches chicken over it, and Indonesian nasi uduk is scented with lemongrass and pandan. Two practical notes about this version. There is a discrepancy in the source: its ingredient list and its method give different quantities of water, and the method names sugar and turmeric that never appear in the ingredients. The ratio here follows the ingredient list. The other point is the one the source is right about: leave it alone while it cooks. Agitating rice releases starch and turns it gluey, and in a rice cooker there is no reason to lift the lid at all until it switches to warm.

40 minDebby

East African Pilau

Pilau is the spiced rice of the East African coast: rice cooked with cumin, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and turmeric until every grain carries the spice. It is celebration food across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar, made for weddings, for Eid, and whenever a guest of consequence arrives. It reached the Swahili coast through centuries of Indian Ocean trade, and the family it belongs to runs from Persian polow through Central Asian plov to South Asian pulao. The East African version is milder than the Indian one and does not use curry, which is the distinction the source draws and it is a fair one. The defining spice mix has its own name, pilau masala, and there is a recipe for it on this site. An important note about this page. Its written description is of a full pilau: caramelised beef, potatoes, tomatoes and pilau masala simmered in meat stock. The recipe card attached to it is something else entirely, a plain spiced rice with no meat, no potatoes and no stock. The recipe below follows the card, since that is the actual recipe on the page, and the result is a good vegetarian side dish. It is not, however, the celebratory beef pilau the description promises. Browning the onions properly is the step that matters most in either version.

50 minBlessing

Cabidela, Portuguese chicken and rice finished with blood and vinegar

Cabidela (Chicken and Rice with Blood)

Arroz de cabidela is a Portuguese dish of chicken and rice finished with blood and vinegar, which turns the rice a deep reddish brown. It comes from the Minho region in the north of Portugal and has been recorded in writing there since the sixteenth century. The blood is the dish, and there is no way to make cabidela without it. Traditionally the bird's own blood is collected at slaughter and mixed immediately with vinegar, which stops it clotting; it goes into the pot at the very end, off the heat, because boiling it would make it grainy. This is a nose-to-tail practice found across many older food cultures, and Portugal is one of the places where it survives in a named, everyday dish rather than as a curiosity. Two notes about this version. It uses pig's blood rather than chicken blood, which is a common substitution outside a farm setting and is what is generally available. And the source names a specific brand of hot sauce, which has been described generically here. The dish is not African. It is filed under Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged. Portugal's colonial reach did carry cabidela to Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Goa, where local versions exist, but the source describes the Portuguese original.

1 hrNympha

Cape Malay Yellow Rice

Rice cooked with turmeric, cinnamon, raisins and sugar into a sweet golden side dish. It is South African, from the Cape Malay tradition, and it is served alongside savoury curries and meat. Sweet rice as a savoury accompaniment is the thing to understand. Cape Malay yellow rice contains sugar, raisins and cinnamon, and it goes with curry, bobotie and roast meat, the sweetness is deliberately set against savoury and spiced food rather than served as a dessert. That contrast runs right through Cape Malay cooking and it is the same instinct behind bobotie's fruit chutney and the apricot jam in pickled fish. The community it comes from was formed by people brought to the Cape from Southeast Asia as slaves and political exiles by the Dutch from the seventeenth century onwards, and the dish is one of many that carries that history directly. Related yellow rices exist across the world, nasi kuning in Indonesia, kaha buth in Sri Lanka, and the family resemblance is not coincidental. Turmeric is what colours it. Saffron is used in more expensive versions and annatto elsewhere. **A significant problem with this page.** Its ingredient list merges two separate recipes, a yellow rice and a marinated roast chicken, into one list, and its method covers both. Only the rice belongs here.

South Africa50 minAnthonyJ

Gluten-Free Fried Rice

Cooked rice fried with vegetables, garlic, ginger and a spice blend, using tamari or gluten-free soy sauce in place of the ordinary kind. No country is claimed; the source describes it as an African take on fried rice without naming where. The gluten in a normal fried rice is almost entirely in one ingredient, and it is the one people overlook. Soy sauce is brewed from wheat as well as soybeans, so a dish that contains no bread, no pasta and no flour is still not gluten-free if soy sauce goes into it. Tamari, which is brewed with little or no wheat, is the standard substitution, and most brands are certified. Rice itself is naturally gluten-free. The other thing worth checking is the spice blend. The source suggests berbere or ras el hanout, and both are usually gluten-free, but commercial blends are frequently bulked out with flour as an anti-caking agent, and neither is a fixed formula. Read the label rather than assuming. One caution about the source's framing. It claims gluten-free is "the second most in-demand recipe option in a lot of African countries", which is a specific statistical claim with nothing behind it, and it has not been carried across.

35 minLaila

Moroccan Lamb Chops with Chermoula herb marinade served over rice with lemon, a fragrant North African grilled lamb dish

Lamb Chops, Chermoula & Rice

Lamb chops with chermoula and yellow rice is Moroccan, grilled or roasted lamb served with a fresh herb sauce and turmeric-stained rice. Chermoula is the part worth knowing. It is a North African sauce and marinade built on fresh coriander and parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon and oil, and its name comes from the Arabic chermel, meaning to rub or to marinate. That etymology describes exactly how it is used: rubbed into meat or fish before cooking, and often served again alongside as a sauce. It is most associated with fish, where it is close to standard across Morocco and Algeria, but it works with lamb particularly well, the herbs and lemon cut through fat in a way that a heavier sauce would not. Lamb runs through Moroccan cooking at every level, from long slow tagines to chops straight off a grill, and this is at the fast end of that range. The rice is coloured and lightly perfumed with turmeric rather than saffron, which is the everyday choice, visually similar, entirely different in flavour and cost.

Morocco25 minFoodChef

Oven Baked Jollof Rice

Oven-baked jollof takes the standard West African one-pot and moves it into the oven, where the heat surrounds the dish rather than coming from below. The reason to bother is practical. Stovetop jollof burns from the base, and getting it right means managing heat carefully, too high and the bottom catches badly, too low and the rice steams unevenly. In an oven the heat is even, the rice cooks through without attention, and the pot cannot scorch in the same way. For anyone who has ruined jollof on a hob, that is a real argument. What you trade away is the smoky note. That flavour comes precisely from the bottom of the pot catching slightly, and an oven does not give it. Cooks who want both build the base on the hob and finish in the oven. Everything else is unchanged: the same reduced tomato, red pepper, onion and chilli base, the same long-grain parboiled rice, the same rule about not stirring once it is covered. It scales well, which makes it useful for cooking for numbers.

NigeriaCuisine228

Vary amin'anana, Malagasy rice cooked with greens into a thick porridge

Vary Amin'anana (Malagasy Greens and Rice)

Vary amin'anana is rice cooked together with greens, tomatoes, onion and ginger until it becomes a thick, soupy porridge. It is Malagasy, and the name says exactly what it is: vary is rice, anana is greens. It is everyday food in the most literal sense. Rice is eaten at nearly every meal in Madagascar, and vary amin'anana is one of the most common ways of preparing it, cheap, filling, made from whatever leaves are available, and eaten at any hour including breakfast. Brèdes is the Malagasy term for the family of edible greens it uses, which covers everything from mustard greens to watercress to cassava leaves depending on the season. Ginger is the note that makes it Malagasy rather than generically green. It goes in early with the tomatoes and onions and runs through the whole dish. Two things about this particular version. It uses brown rice, which is unusual, white rice is standard in Madagascar, and it has been converted to a slow cooker, which is not a Malagasy method. The source explains why: it was adapted so it could be transported to a fundraiser. That provenance is worth recording, since it explains both oddities. The proportions are worth reading: twelve cups of water to five cups of rice gives something soupy rather than fluffy, which is correct.

Madagascar4 hr 20 minFoodChef

Recettes

Biryani

Caribbean Rice

No Corn Starch Rice Cakes (Ablo)

Ghana Jollof Rice

East African Pilau

Nigerian Native Jollof Rice

Jollof Rice

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

Coconut Fried Rice

Waakye

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

No Corn Starch Rice Cakes (Ablo)

Ghana Jollof Rice

Ivorian Jollof Rice

Waakye

Beetroot Rice

Rice Balls (Omo Tuo)

Biryani

Caribbean Rice

Jollof Rice

Nigerian Native Jollof Rice

Coconut Fried Rice

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

East African Pilau

Cabidela (Chicken and Rice with Blood)

Cape Malay Yellow Rice

Gluten-Free Fried Rice

Lamb Chops, Chermoula & Rice

Oven Baked Jollof Rice

Vary Amin'anana (Malagasy Greens and Rice)

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Biryani

East African Pilau

Nigerian Native Jollof Rice

Jollof Rice

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

Coconut Fried Rice

Waakye

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

No Corn Starch Rice Cakes (Ablo)

Ghana Jollof Rice

Ivorian Jollof Rice

Waakye

Beetroot Rice

Rice Balls (Omo Tuo)

Biryani

Caribbean Rice

Jollof Rice

Nigerian Native Jollof Rice

Coconut Fried Rice

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

East African Pilau

Cabidela (Chicken and Rice with Blood)

Cape Malay Yellow Rice

Gluten-Free Fried Rice

Lamb Chops, Chermoula & Rice

Oven Baked Jollof Rice

Vary Amin'anana (Malagasy Greens and Rice)