Muamba Chicken (Muamba De Galinha)
Overview
Muamba is a family of palm based dishes across Angola and the Congo basin, and the chicken version is the one most often named as Angola's national dish. Chicken is simmered in palm oil with onion, garlic, tomato and hot pepper, thickened with okra, and served over rice or with funge, the cassava porridge. This particular version takes a path towards the Congo. Peanut butter goes in alongside the palm oil, which is a Congolese and Central African treatment more closely associated with moambe than with the Luandan preparation, and the result is heavier and nuttier than the Angolan version that relies on palm oil and okra alone. Both are legitimate. Muamba names a method rather than a single fixed recipe, and it changes as it crosses the region. The palm oil is what holds all the versions together. It is pressed from the fruit of the oil palm, which is indigenous to West and Central Africa, and it gives the dish its deep orange colour and a flavour that no other fat provides. Angolans call it dendem. Whatever else varies between one muamba and the next, a version made without palm oil is a chicken stew and not a muamba, which is the one point on which nobody in the region disagrees.
AFN Heritage Note
Muamba names a family of palm based dishes across Angola and the Congo basin, of which the chicken preparation is the most widely known. The oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, is indigenous to West and Central Africa and its fruit has been processed for oil there for several thousand years.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Simmer the chicken covered in water with the bay leaf and thyme until it is falling off the bone. Keep it at a simmer rather than a hard boil, which toughens the meat.
- 2
Pull the meat off the bone and reserve the stock.
- 3
Fry the onion, hot pepper and garlic in the palm oil until translucent. Add the tomato.
- 4
Stir in the tomato paste and about half a cup of the reserved stock.
- 5
Add the peanut butter.
- 6
You should have a sauce with the texture of a thick tomato sauce. Add more stock if it is too tight.
- 7
Return the chicken to the pan and simmer for a few minutes so the flavours come together.
- 8
Add the okra and cook for 2 to 3 minutes until just tender.
- 9
Serve over rice or with funge.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Nympha Nzeribe- Simmer the chicken rather than boiling it. A hard boil tightens the muscle fibres and gives rubbery meat, which is the one thing that cannot be corrected later.
- Loosen the peanut butter with hot stock before it goes in, or it will sit in lumps that take a long time to disperse.
- Add the okra at the very end and give it two or three minutes only. Longer and it collapses and the sauce turns slimy.
- This version uses peanut butter alongside the palm oil, which is closer to the Congolese moambe treatment. The Luandan version relies on palm oil and okra without peanut, and both are correct.
- Funge, the Angolan cassava porridge, and plain rice are the standard accompaniments. Boiled cassava also works.
Reviews
4 reviews
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Mufete
Funge
Kizaca
That tip to keep the chicken at a gentle simmer instead of a hard boil saved the meat from turning tough! Picked up my palm oil in Scarborough at the market near Lawrence. Mixed the chunky peanut butter into the tomato and palm oil base just like you wrote, tasted incredible with warm rice o.
found the red palm oil at Your DeKalb Farmers Market easily. My only thing is the whole 6 oz can of tomato paste made the sauce a bit too thick once the half cup of peanut butter went in, so I had to add almost a full cup of the reserved stock to loosen it up. Good flavor sha.
I got my red palm oil from the African store on Bissonnet here in Houston and used chunky Skippy since that was in my pantry. Simmering the chicken low with the bay leaf and thyme made the stock so rich! My husband cleared his plate, e sweet no be small thing.
abeg can I just leave the chicken pieces on the bone instead of pulling all the meat off after simmering with the thyme and bay leaf? In Lagos here we like to bite the bone in stew, but I want to try this Angolan peanut butter and palm oil combination for Sunday dinner.