We bring Africa right into your kitchen with this recipe and show you not only how this beautiful dish is made, but also how you can make them in your own home.

It is not surprising that this is the first on our list. This Nigerian meal is eaten across all cultures and in every season. Most often than not, there is a competition between Ghana and Nigeria on who cooks the best Jollof and Nigeria’s Jollof rice has for most times had its head high. This meal is one of the best representatives of the country and we will show you just how to prepare it.

Recipe

There are many different ways to prepare the Nigerian Jollof and each way comes with a very unique and special recipe. These include:

The Coconut Jollof Rice

The Smoky Party Jollof Rice

Mixed vegetable Jollof Rice

As most people get creative in the kitchen, we trust that you can also bring a spark of your creativity to the room and create your own variation of the meal.

But for now, we present you our very own recipe for preparing Jollof Rice

Ingredients

Any variation of Jollof Rice you’re looking to prepare requires some basic ingredients. These ingredients are listed below:

Two cups of rice

Three big-sized tomatoes

Some tomato pastes

Four small-sized onions

About three to four fresh pepper

Scotch bonnet peppers

About 100 ml of Vegetable oil

Chicken

Salt to taste

About two to three seasoning cubes

Two pinches of Thyme

¼ spoon of curry powder

2 cloves of ginger and 3 fingers of garlic (optional)

6 cups of water

2 dried bay leaves

Preparation time would be about 25 minutes while it will take you about an hour and 15 minutes to cook your delicacy.

Let’s get to it

Enough of the wait! It’s time to tie your apron and get cooking.

Step 1: Parboil Your Chicken

Alright, get your chicken from the freezer and prepare to parboil it. You will need the outlined spices- like the thyme, the curry, some pinches of salt, and some grounded pepper to do this. You’d also need some onions and maybe some garlic and ginger as you might prefer, but we will recommend that you use only as much spices as you want.

When you’re done, remove the boiled chicken from the pot. You’d be left with some of the remaining chicken stock from boiling the chicken. Keep this, because you will need it very soon.

Step 2: Prepare Your Stew

Now, shift your focus to your big-sized tomatoes, your fresh peppers and your scotch bonnet peppers. What you want to do is get one of your onions and blend it with the tomatoes and fresh peppers. Use an electronic blender for this.

You could also add some tomato paste to the blend. This will give your meal more color and taste. You want to blend till the whole mix is completely smooth. This shouldn’t take more than a minute. When you have achieved that, you’re done with this phase of the cooking and it’s about time to move on to the rest. Before you do, however, you can fix yourself a friendly cold drink, because from here onward, things are about to get hot and steamy.

Step 3: Parboil Your Rice

You sure know how to per boil your rice, if not, we’ll direct you. Boil 4 cups of water in a pot, add the 2 cups of rice you have set aside and on high heat, allow the rice to cook for just 10 minutes. When you’re done, get a sieve and place it in the sink, then get your safety gloves, grab your cooking pot with the parboiled rice and pour out the rice into the sieve. Run about a cup of clean water over the rice and let the water sieve out.

Done? Great!

You can transfer the rice to another pot now and cover, just to preserve the heat. You deserve another cold drink you know, but we can’t afford to spoil you just yet, so get on with it.

Step 4: In the Mix

Things are about to get more interesting. Remember the chicken stock we asked you to keep. This is exactly where you’ll need. We love cooking our rice with chicken stock because it gives you all the extra flavor it needs. In fact, about 70 percent of the seasonings you used in the preparation of your chicken stock go into it.

Alright, add your vegetable oil into a clean pot and place on low heat. While it slowly begins to heat, get the remaining onions you have sliced and prepare to add into the oil. Look out for that sizzling sound. You can also add some garlic to the mix. Done? Now pour your chicken stock and leave it to steam for a few minutes. Now add about three cubes of seasoning and some fingers of ginger to taste.

After this, add about a teaspoon of thyme and curry. Then add some salt to taste and leave the mixture for about a minute. Done?

Good! Now stir and taste. If the salt is not enough, add a bit more. If it seems a bit too much, don’t worry, we’ll add some water now.

You probably want to know just how much water you need. It’s simple: add just enough to get your rice done. Since the rice is already parboiled, you wouldn’t need too much water to get this done.

Alright! Now, place your cooker on medium heat and add your parboiled rice with the stew into the pot and cover. Allow it to cook for 20 to 25 minutes.

Historical significance

While you wait for your delicacy to get done, how about a little lesson on the history of this special meal?

Life of the party!

Jollof rice is served at about every party you go to in Nigeria. In fact, a party without Jollof is nothing but just a meeting. It is a little wonder that this meal is dubbed “The Life of the Party!”

Most children from average Nigerian homes believe that when their mothers cook Jollof, then it is most certainly a special occasion. This occasion involves birthdays, graduation ceremonies, naming and housewarming ceremonies and loads of other ceremonious activities. Beyond the home, this meal ticks itself present at every wedding and other first-class and high status events.

All done!

You will know your meal is done when the aroma starts wafting in the air and just a taste of your Jollof rice takes you straight to heaven’s gates. This should be about an hour and 15 minutes after you start cooking your meal.

All that’s left to be done is to serve your meal to all interested family members or friends. You can serve it with your fried chicken, some fried plantains, maybe with some boiled eggs too. If you have any vegetarian friends too, then you can choose to serve the meal with some vegetables.

So that’s it. We guarantee you won’t have a better time in the kitchen as you probably would when preparing this delicacy.

But maybe not! Maybe a trip to Durban will be all it takes to change your mind.

10 servings – 318 calories

(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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