Nigerian Recipes

Fried Whole Tilapia

Frying a tilapia whole is one of the most common ways it is eaten across West Africa, and it is a different proposition from cooking fillets. The skin crisps, the flesh stays moist against the bone, and the head and tail crisp up alongside, which many people consider the best part. Tilapia is a freshwater fish of shallow streams, ponds, rivers and lakes, native to Africa and now farmed on an enormous scale worldwide. That scale is why it is cheap and widely available, and it has become one of the most consumed fish in the world. It is bony, which puts some people off, and worth the small amount of care that eating it requires. The technique here is scoring and shallow frying rather than deep frying. Diagonal cuts across both sides let the spice paste reach the flesh rather than sitting on the skin, and they help the fish cook evenly through the thickest part. Turmeric, garlic, black pepper and habanero form the rub. Tilting the pan so the head and tail are submitted to the oil in turn is a small detail that matters: those parts sit above the oil line otherwise and stay soft while the middle crisps.

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30 minEasyNigeria · Togolese

Recipe by AnthonyJ · Africook

Chicken Suya

Suya is skewered meat coated in yaji, a dry peanut based spice blend, and it is the best known street food in Nigeria. It comes from the Hausa people of the north, where it is also called tsire, and it spread from there across West Africa. Sudan has a close relative in agashe. Yaji is what makes it suya rather than grilled meat. The blend is built on ground peanut, usually in the form of kuli kuli crushed to a powder, with ginger, chilli, onion powder and other seasonings, and the peanut is what gives suya its particular nuttiness and the slightly gritty coating that clings to the meat. Meat without yaji is not suya, whatever else is done to it. Beef and ram are the traditional cuts, along with kidney, liver and tripe, and chicken is the newer arrival that has become common. It is sold at night from roadside grills, cut on a board and handed over in newspaper with sliced raw onion, tomato and cabbage, and the raw onion alongside the hot spice is not a garnish but part of how it is eaten. The one thing worth knowing before making it is that yaji contains peanut, which matters to anyone with an allergy.

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1 hr 25 minEasyNigeria

Recipe by Nympha · Africook

Gizpotato

Gizpotato is gizdodo with potato in place of plantain, and the contributor presents it as exactly that: an alternative for people who want the dish without the sweetness. Gizzards, diced Irish potato, carrots, onion and bell peppers are seasoned and combined. Irish potato is the Nigerian term for the ordinary white potato, used to distinguish it from sweet potato and from yam, both of which are far more central to Nigerian cooking. Its use here is deliberate: potato is neutral where plantain is sweet, so the dish reads as savoury throughout rather than balancing sweet against spicy. The seasoning departs from Nigerian convention. Worcestershire sauce and bottled chilli sauce are not standard in a dish of this kind, and they place this firmly in contemporary home cooking rather than tradition. Worcestershire also contains anchovy, so it is neither vegetarian nor suitable for anyone avoiding fish, and most brands are not gluten free. The source is very sparse: no quantities at all, and it is filed under dessert and suya recipes in WordPress, neither of which is correct.

50 minEasyNigeria

Recipe by Ermanuella Ben · Africook

Nigerian Yam Brownie

This is a brownie made with mashed yam in place of much of the flour, and it is a deliberate fusion rather than a traditional dish. The contributor presents it as exactly that: a twist on a familiar dessert using a Nigerian staple. Yam is not a substitute ingredient in Nigeria; it is a central one, eaten pounded, fried, roasted and in porridge, and it carries cultural weight that potatoes do not. Using it in a brownie is a contemporary move, and it works on the same principle as sweet potato or black bean brownies: the starch gives body and moisture while the cocoa carries the flavour. What results is denser and fudgier than a flour brownie, with an earthy background note from the yam. Two cups of mashed yam against half a cup of flour is a high ratio, so the texture is closer to a baked pudding than a cakey brownie. There is no tradition behind it and this entry does not invent one. It belongs to the growing body of Nigerian home baking that treats local staples as ingredients for Western formats, alongside plantain cakes and yam flour breads.

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50 minEasyNigeria · African

Recipe by Laila · Africook