Rice Balls (Omo Tuo)
Abuja, Nigeria · View all recipes
Overview
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.
AFN Heritage Note
Omo tuo is a Ghanaian rice preparation associated with Sunday meals and conventionally served with groundnut or palm nut soup. The same technique is known as tuwo shinkafa among the Hausa of northern Nigeria and Niger.
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
Rinse the rice well to remove excess starch.
- 2
Put the rice in a large pot and cover generously with water, leaving room so it does not boil over.
- 3
Cook over medium heat until the water comes to the boil.
- 4
As the liquid is absorbed, reduce the heat and test a grain between your fingers. It should be extremely soft, almost collapsing.
- 5
If it is not soft enough, add a little more water and continue, testing as you go.
- 6
Once the rice is soft, drop the heat to its lowest and begin mashing and folding the rice against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon.
- 7
Keep mashing until the grains come together into a smooth, cohesive dough.
- 8
Take the pot off the heat.
- 9
Wet your hands or a spoon and shape the dough into smooth balls.
- 10
Serve warm with groundnut or palm nut soup.
Africook’s Notes
- Use soft short or medium grain rice. Long grain, basmati and jasmine stay separate however long they cook and will never form a dough.
- Overcook the rice on purpose. The point where ordinary rice would be ruined is where omo tuo starts.
- Mash against the side of the pot rather than stirring in the middle. The pressure against a hard surface is what breaks the grains down.
- Wet your hands or your spoon before shaping, or the dough sticks to everything.
- Serve it warm. It firms up considerably as it cools and is much harder to eat cold.
- An ice cream scoop dipped in water gives evenly sized balls quickly if you are serving several people.
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