Nigerian Recipes

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.

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40 minEasyNigeria

Recipe by Maryam · Africook

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.

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50 minEasyNigeria

Recipe by Amako Blessing · Africook

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.

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1 hrMediumNigeria

Recipe by Beatrice · Africook

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.

1 hrEasyNigeria

Recipe by Cuisine228 · Africook