Stew is one of the most universally beloved dishes on the planet, and every nation has a stew recipe they are especially proud of. Nigeria is no exception, and stew preparation is one of the things every Nigerian has to learn sooner or later. Find out how to make Nigerian stew right now!
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1. How to cook beef stew
Beef stew is, perhaps, the most popular variety of the dish in Nigeria. If you want to learn how to cook Nigerian stew, it’s best to start with beef – this dish has millions of fans around the country.
1. Ingredients
To get the most out of the best beef stew recipe, get your ingredients ready!
- Fresh tomatoes or canned tomato puree – 1,5kg
- Tomato paste – 100g
- Beef – 500g
- Medium onions – 2
- Habanero pepper – 5
- Stock cubes – 2
- Thyme – 1tbsp
- Curry – 1tbsp
- Vegetable oil
- Salt to taste
2. How to cook stew
Follow these steps and find out how to prepare stew the most delicious way!
- Wash the meat and cut it into bite-sized chunks. Place the chunks into a pot, pour water to completely cover the meat, add salt, 1 stock cube, thyme, and curry.
- Turn the stove on and cook on medium heat until the meat is ready. Take out the meat chunks and fry them until they are golden brown. Don’t throw the beef stock away!
- Mix the tomato paste with a little bit of water and let it rest.
- Using a food processor or blender, grind the fresh tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Place the mixture into a pot and cook on low heat until the vegetable paste thickens.
- In a separate pot, heat up some vegetable oil. Add the vegetable mixture and the tomato paste, mix well and cook for about 20-30 minutes or until the tomatoes lose their sour taste. Make sure to constantly stir, so that the mixture doesn’t burn!
- Pour in the beef stock and cook for 10 minutes. Finally, add the remaining stock cube, the fried beef, salt to taste and let the stew simmer for additional 5 minutes.
This is how to prepare a stew for rice. You can also serve the stew over boiled and mashed potatoes, yam, or beans. The beef stew recipe is rather universal – you can take the beef out and use the remaining sauce to cook Jollof rice.
2. How to cook fish stew
As every experienced cook knows, once you know how to make Nigerian stew with beef, you can easily transform this recipe for any other protein – for example, fish. The most popular way to cook the fish stew recipe is to use mackerel, although you can also do it with catfish or tilapia.
To succeed in making stew from fish, first, you need to follow the basic tomato stew recipe. You can make the stew sauce in large quantities and freeze for later.
As for the fish, first, you need to clean it and cut it into 1-inch thick chunks. To stop the fish chunks from falling apart while cooking, you can boil them in water for a couple of minutes first. Then fry the fish until it’s golden brown and follow the recipe on how to prepare stew sauce. Once the sauce is ready, add the fried fish, bring the stew to the boil once more and turn the stove off.
3. What other stew ingredients can you use?
Like many Nigerian dishes, the stew is incredibly versatile. The only thing that stays the same is the tomato – after all, it’s a tomato stew. However, you can cook stew with any protein you like.
For many Nigerian cooks who are learning how to prepare stew, chicken is their go-to protein. Others swear by goat meat stew. You can also mix proteins – for example, beef and chicken or assorted beef stew are big hits with millions of families!
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