Nigerian Palm Oil Beans With Veggies – How To Clean Beans

Cooking palm oil beans dish is popular in West Africa especially in Nigeria.

It is also known as Ewa riro or beans porridge.

This dish is delicious, flavourful and easy to make and here is a simple authentic method for cooking palm oil beans with veggies.

All you need to do is to trust the process and the amazing thing about this simple dish is how delicious it tastes.

Ingredients for palm oil beans.

Before using the ingredients listed above to cook, a major step mustn’t be over looked, that is cleaning the beans.

It is essential to state that this cleaning process must be done for all types of Nigerian beans.

This includes oloyin beans, olotu beans and other types of Nigerian dried beans.

To get this right, kindly follow this step-by-step process.

Pour the beans into a bowl and get two separate bowls ready
One bowl is for the cleaned beans while the other bowl would be for the chaff and dirt removed
Scoop a small quantity in your hands.
Remove any stone, chaff or dirt seen into the small bowl
Then put the clean beans into the other bowl
Do this until all the beans have been picked.
Dispose the dirt in the second bowl
Now, it is time for the second cleaning which is washing the beans.
Pour water into the bowl filled with beans
Rinse it in water with hands to remove dust.
Clean with water multiple times until the water is clear.

Now the beans is ready for cooking.

For those familiar with cooking Nigerian beans, this is a well known technique.

However, this video is for beginners who don’t know how to clean before cooking it.

Attached below is a free tutorial video where the process explain above is shown.

How to clean beans properly | Step-by-step guide

As soon as the cleaning process is done, it is time to move into the proper cooking process of how to make Nigerian stewed beans with veggies.

For this part of this recipe, I will start with the preparations first.

Peel off onion skin and slice to desired size.
Clean bell peppers and chop into small size.
Put clean beans into a pot
Add 4-5 cups of water and allow to boil.
As soon as the beans starts to boil, drain of the beans water by pouring into a sieve. – removing the first water used for boiling the beans is done to get rid of the preservatives used for preserving it from getting infested by insects.
Pour the beans back into the pot.
Add water and chopped onions.
Cook until beans is very soft
While cooking, always check to ensure that there is enough water in the beans to perfect the cooking process.
Also, when the water dries up, add more water and continue cooking until it is soft.
It should have a ‘melt in the mouth’ kind of softness, so you may want to taste it to be sure.
Season with salt for taste
Add chopped peppers, sweet corn and garden peas.
Mix well to combine
Spice up the dish with chilli powder
Add palm oil for the traditional palm oil beans silky taste.
Stir well to combine
Add 1.5 cups water then cook for 10 minutes on medium heat
Stir at regular intervals so the beans doesnt get stuck to the pot and burn
Allow to cook down