Preparing Nigerian Rice and Beans with Stew

Nigerian Rice and Beans with Stew

The Nigerian rice and beans eaten with a combination of stew is a very delicious and popular mix. This is very popular in restaurants and other small or large food spots. The yummy taste of this combo will make you demand for more, without even noticing when you are full.

Ingredients for This Recipe

• Rice
• Beans
• Tomatoes (fresh and canned)
• Salt
• Onions
• Seasoning cubes
• Groundnut oil
• Pepper
• Spices
• Meat
• Fish
• Curry powder

How to Prepare Nigerian Rice and Beans with Stew

There are two methods of cooking Nigerian rice and beans that can be eaten using stew. This two methods will be discussed in details below.

Method One (Seperation)

In this method, the beans, rice and stew will all be cooked seperately. Below I will walk you through all the steps you need to achieve this.

For Rice

Uncooked rice

• Wash the rice using adequate amount of water. Put it in a pot then boil.
• After boiling for a few minutes, put it down then wash again. This will remove all the leftover preservatives added from the factory. I like washing my rice this way to make it more healthy.
• Add water then boil it again.
• Add salt when it boils.
• Continue boiling the rice till it softens. Once the rice softens, if there is still some water left in it, sieve it out. If the water is very small, you can boil it till it dries up, then your rice is done.

Cooked white rice

For Beans

Pour the quantity of beans you want to cook into a flat container. This will enable you to pick out any stone that might be mixed with the beans. Also remove any other seeds that might find their way into your beans. Example maize grains, the beans pod and other stuff.

Uncooked beans

Wash the beans thoroughly to remove any leftover stone or pod that you might have missed while hand seperating. This will also help in removing preservatives from the beans.

Add water then boil the beans. It is also advisable to sieve out the first water when the beans boils, this wil further remove a significant amount of preservatives from the beans making it more healthy for consumption.

Boil the beans till it softens completely. Add more water if it dries up while the beans has not soften up completely. If there is a leftover of water when the beans is done, you just sieve it out because we need the beans dry, without water in it.

Cooked beans

Method Two (Combination)

In this method, you will also prep the rice and beans as shown in method one. The only difference will be in the cooking aspect.

• You start by cooking the beans till it’s near softening, then add rice to it. Boil the two of them together adding only salt. In some case, you might decide to add onions.
• Cook till it softens and your rice and beans is done and ready to be served.

Preparing Stew

There are different ways of preparing Stew in Nigeria, but I will be discussing the most popular method used commonly by almost every household.

Prepping the Ingredients 

The major ingredients that I will consider for prepping will be the meat and the fish. Depending on the meat and fish of your choice, you can decide to cook the two of them together or separately. This wholly depends on the fish or meat in question, because there are some fish that needs lots of steps and processes for cooking it.

Wash you meat, pour it into a pot then boil it. Once it boils, add salt, pepper, onions and seasoning cubes. Cook for some minutes, then add water. Use medium heat while cooking, so the water content won’t dry up faster leaving the meat uncooked. When the meat softens as desired, that means the meat is done. You can bring it down.

Making the Stew

• Place an empty pot on your cooker, put an adequate amount of groundnut oil into the dry pot.
• Heat the oil for a minute or two, while keeping the heat at medium to prevent the oil from smoking and evaporating.
• When the pild heats up, add salt and onions.
• Stir the content, then add the fresh tomatoes, stir completely and add a small quantity of water then boil for some minutes.
• Add the canned tomatoes paste, stir them altogether to mix. Cover the pot and boil for some minutes to remove the sourness of the tomatoes.
• Add the already cooked meat and fish.
• Add additional pepper, onions, seasoning cubes, and spices, then taste if the ingredients added is enough.
• You might need to add additional water if the stew is too thick. Also taste for salt in an event you add additional water to the stew. If it needs additional salt, you should add it to taste.
• Cook the stew for some minutes till all the tomatoes’ sourness is eliminated and your stew is ready to be served.

How to Serve

This meal I just showed you how to cook can be served in one single plate; the rice, beans and stew scooped into one plate. Alternatively you can decide to combine rice and beans in a plate, then put your stew in another plate (If you used method one). You can still go ahead to put all of them in seperately plates, the choice is all yours (Still applicable to method one).

Rice and beans with stew

Conclusion

Remember this is a combination of three different types of meals in one. I first of all showed you how to cook white rice, followed by beans and finally I topped it up with an amazing yummy stew which is prepared specifically for the rice and beans.

Frequently Asked Questions 

What Does Rice and Beans go With?

Rice and beans combo is perfect to combine with stew and a chilled juice or soda.

In Nigeria, What do You Eat With Beans?

Rice is a perfect combination with beans anytime. But yam and plantain is another recipe worth trying out. This will be discussed in our next recipe.

Can you Cook Dry Beans and Rice Together?

It’s always tempting to cook the two of them together to save time and resources. But generally in Nigeria, based the quality of rice and beans available here, rice will soften up a long time before beans.

So it’s advisable if you want to add them together, first of all cook beans for sometime before adding rice.