Weekly Recipes - 1 of 5: Jollof Rice🇳🇬🇬🇭

A Monthlong Personal Culinary Journey

I love to eat, and I excel (heavy emphasis) at eating. I also love to cook, but I don’t excel at cooking.

In the spirit of experimentation and growth, I am starting a new PACT (see previous blog for more info on PACTs) where I cook a different recipe for the first time each week over the course of five weeks. Each new recipe is paired with a blog, which will highlight the ingredients, the process, lessons learned and my overall thoughts on the dish.

In general, my blog covers various topics — by no means is it a cooking-specific blog. However, over the course of the next 5 weeks, this page will be cooking focused. So let this be the commencement of my cooking series.

Jollof Rice is the focus for this week. A West African staple that I’ve seen pop up on my timeline many times. I’ve seen the back and forth from different nations (especially Nigeria and Ghana) where their each claims they have the superior version. I cannot comment on which country deserves the crown due to my lack of experience. However, I can comment on the fact that Jollof Rice is quite a popular dish and that there are certain aspects that remind me of the Persian dishes I grew up eating. E.g., flavor packed rice, the extensive use of tomato and tomato paste, a rice and meat dish.

There were various recipes I found, but this was the primary one I followed.

Ingredients

See image further below. Nothing was measured. I just eyeballed everything.

• Chicken Thighs — Bone-in, skin-on was recommended. However, I already had boneless, skinless thighs

• Basmati Rice — Long-grained, parboiled rice was recommended. However, I already had a giant Costco bag of basmati

• Red Bell Peppers

• Roma Tomatoes

• Red Onion — Depending on the recipe, I saw recommendations for either red or white onions. I chose red to stay consistent with the red / orange color theme of the ingredients making up the sauce

• Habanero Peppers — Scotch Bonnet was the recommendation, but my grocer didn’t carry them

• Ginger

• Garlic

• Tomato Paste

• Chicken Broth

• Chicken Bouillon Cubes — Maggi Cubes were recommended, but my grocer didn’t carry them

• Curry Powder

• Thyme — Some recipes recommended sprigs of thyme. However, I kept it simple with jarred thyme

• Bay Leaves

• Salt & Pepper

• Oil — Whatever you use for high temp cooking

The Cooking Process

Fuck. That’s what went through my head as I entered hour 4 of the prep / cook process. This recipe took much longer than I anticipated. On the surface it sounded simple: flavored rice and some meat on the side. However, that could not have been further from the truth. A majority of the time came from the rice, specifically the sauces that served as the flavor base.

Caveat: Part of the time consuming nature is also obviously due to my lack of experience.

• 30-40 mins: Making a pseudo chicken stock. This stock is then used when cooking the rice

• 15-20 mins: Shallow frying the chicken

• 75 - 90 mins: Making the Jollof base. ~10 mins rinsing and prepping the veg. ~30 mins roasting the veg in the oven. ~10 mins blending the sauce and cleaning the blender (very annoying). ~30-40 mins reducing the sauce by half

• 30-40 mins: Frying the tomato paste and onion, then adding the base sauce and letting that simmer, then finally adding the spices and stock and letting it simmer further

• 40-50 mins: Rinsing the rice and cooking it in the base / sauce

Of course there was more time spent prepping ingredients and cleaning the chaos in the kitchen. However, the above breakdown provides an idea of the main stages of the cook.

Lessons Learned

The recipe was delicious. However, I would love to taste a properly cooked version from a pro (African mom or auntie) to experience the true flavor and consistency of the rice.

A key lesson I learned is to prep more. No, I’m not referring to cutting veg, removing excess fat from the meat, etc. When I refer to “prep”, I mean studying. Prior to getting in the kitchen, I recommend reviewing a recipe top to bottom, ideally more than once. Watching a video version is optimal. I’ll be following this tip for future recipes. Nothing worse than constantly pulling out your phone to rewind a part of the cooking video in the midst of cooking in a chaotic kitchen with dirty hands.

Following recipes annoy me, specifically measuring ingredients, especially the spices. It feels meticulous and takes away from the fun. It’s more effort for marginal improvement in my opinion. Hot take? I find winging it (reasonably winging it) to be easier and more enjoyable. I follow the mantra of cooking being more of an art than a science, which is the opposite of baking.

The Jollof base sauce was definitely a labor of love. As I was reducing it, the sauce constantly popped and splashed all over the stovetop, backsplash, and my cooking apron. The remedy was to constantly stir it. However, don’t underestimate the wrist fatigue that comes from stirring a pot nonstop for 30 mins lol. Before you suggest lowering the temp to prevent the popping, I did in fact do that. However, I think the sauce was already so hot due to the veg roasting in the oven and going straight into the blender and then right into the pot. Also, lowering the temp too much slows down the reduction process. A more seasoned chef probably has better recommendations. Just be prepared for either a mess in the kitchen or worn out arms… or both.

I used boneless and skinless chicken thighs because that’s what we already had. However, I strongly recommend using bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. This will create more flavor, and the shallow fry will work better with the skin . Also, this will make the chicken look better for plating. Because the most important thing to remember when presenting a dish is: we eat with our eyes first. The skinless and boneless thigh I served looked quite ugly (unappetizing) to be frank.

The final rice output was very flavorful and tasty. However, once the rice had cooked in the sauce, it had a stronger tomato paste flavor than I anticipated. Prior to adding the rice, the sauce flavor was more robust and absolutely mouthwatering. I’m not sure what went wrong here.

My biggest lesson learned: ALLOW THE RICE TO FULLY ABSORB THE SAUCE. It should not be clumpy or sticky. The issue here is that I don’t know the solution achieve that rice consistency. All I know is that my rice didn’t absorb all the sauce. I failed miserably. It may have been due to using too little water and cooking at too high of a heat? Or maybe too much rice? I started with three cups but added an additional two because I thought there would be too much sauce at the end when I saw the excess of sauce drowning my original three cups of rice. Or maybe using basmati rice instead of the suggested parboiled rice? Or too much water? Or I didn’t blend the sauce enough? Or some other reason? Who knows the solution but the lack of absorption was the major flaw of my final dish.

Image of the final output below. I know… it’s a bit underwhelming.

Stay tuned for more dishes!