Jollof Rice

Jollof rice is a African recipe. I had tasted this once when one of my friend, Olamide, had brought it for lunch and I really liked it. I hope any of you who try it out may also like it.

Please remember that this needs to be a little spicy so that it gives the right taste.

Ingredients

500 gm chicken curry cut pieces

1 cup tomato puree

2 red peppers vertically chopped into pieces

2-3 bay leaves

2 tomatoes finely chopped

2 onions finely chopped

2 cups of rice

4 cups of Chicken stock

Olive oil

Method:

1.       Heat some oil in a cooking pot. After the oil is heated, add the cut onions and sauté till golden brown.

2.       Add the bay leaves, some cashews (if you are interested) and red pepper

3.       Add tomato puree (and hot pepper sauce if required), chopped tomatoes and mix well

4.       Now add the rice to this mixture and mix it so that the colour is even on the rice.

5.       To this now add the chicken stock, chicken pieces and mix

6.       Steam the rice making sure that no steam escapes from the cooking pot. After about 20 minutes, the Jollof rice would be ready.

Alternatives/ Additions

For vegetarian option, you can add vegetable stock and peas, carrot etc instead of chicken.

For non vegetarians, you can also garnish the rice with hard boiled eggs, grilled prawns to give the rice more taste.

Instead of adding chicken to the rice directly when cooking, you can also fry the chicken and add it as a garnishing.

Tips

I did not have chicken/meat stock with me when I was preparing the rice, so I had to improvise with what I had. I boiled the chicken and strained the pieces from the water. Added salt, pepper in this water and used this as the stock. This however is very fatty. If you have enough time, you can prepare the stock in advance and then leave it to cool. Once cooled, remove the fat that is at the top and use the stock.

I also did not have red peppers with me at the time of preparation, so instead I used hot pepper sauce, which made the rice more spicy.