Nigerian Jollof Rice: This is one of the mouth-watering and savory dishes prepared in Nigeria. It is made of a lot of ingredients that make your nose taste the food even before it is served or prepared. Furthermore, it is a classic Nigerian dish seasoned with peppers, tomatoes, and a lot of nice seasonings.
So, if you love rice and you are looking for a nice rice recipe to cook up, then you should try out the Nigerian Jollof Rice recipe. Though there are different recipes for how to prepare this dish, you can still put it together. And even though Nigeria and Ghana are in a friendly feud over who makes the best jollof rice, you will not miss out on the fun.
So, you choose to taste the two and find out which one is best. But we will not be doing that today. Instead, I will be showing you how to prepare Nigerian jollof rice in just a few steps.
How To Make Nigerian Jollof Rice
Making Nigerian Jollof Rice is not as hard as it sounds. However, you need to know what ingredients to use and follow the right procedure to be able to carry out this process successfully. So, in this section, I will be giving you a guide on how to prepare Nigerian Jollof Rice within a given period of time. Now, let us begin:
Ingredients For Making Nigerian Jollof Rice:
- 1 onion.
- 2 cups of rice
- 500 ml of chopped tomatoes
- Maggi.
- 1 teaspoon curry
- 1/2 teaspoon of garlic
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 2 scotch bonnet peppers
- 1 red bell pepper
- 100g tomato paste
- Salt.
- 2 cups of water
- 100ml vegetable oil.
Preparations
If you will love to have a taste of this amazing dish, we will look at how you can possibly prepare it even in your home.
- Blend the scotch bonnet pepper, red bell pepper, and tomatoes together.
- Slice up the onion and keep it aside.
- Next, put the rice in a bowl and soak it in hot water.
- All the rice should soak for 10–15 minutes.
- Then wash it with warm water and set it aside as well.
- Or you can go ahead and parboil the rice and wash it.
- This is to remove the excess starch from the rice.
HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT NIGERIAN SMOKY PARTY JOLLOF RICE
After following the process above to prepare the rice, next is how to prepare the source for the Nigerian jollof rice. Follow the steps below to prepare your source.
- Add oil to a pot and heat it up. A maximum of three minutes is enough.
- Once the oil starts getting hot, add your onions and allow them to fry.
- Make sure that the onions do not burn, so you have to stir them gently as they fry in the oil.
- Then, add your blended ingredients and the tomato paste to the oil and allow it to fry until the sour taste disappears.
- This should happen in about 10–15 minutes of frying.
- Next, add your Maggi or seasoning cube, thyme, curry, salt, garlic, and ginger.
- Mix them all together.
- But be careful with the seasoning cube, as you do not want your dish to be too salty. For a cup of rice, two cubes are ideal.
Final Step
- Add your water and mix it.
- You can taste it to find out if it still needs any seasoning.
- Next, pour the rice into the pot and mix it up together.
- Be sure that the rice is covered in tomato sauce.
- However, it is said that stirring rice on fire can make it burn, so you can use a non-stick pan or a turning stick to stir the rice.
- Then, cook it on low-medium heat.
- Ensure you check the rice after 10 minutes and use a wooden spatula to dip it into the food.
- This will help the sauce go to the bottom, and the food will not start burning.
Cook the rice until it is soft; avoid overcooking; the rice will get soggy. So, what you need to do is when the rice is soft, reduce the heat and leave it to simmer until the water dries out. Now, you can serve the rice and eat it with any meat of your choice. You can also enjoy a meal with plantains.
