Nigerian Rice Stew With Dried Ingredients

For a person who had lived most of her life in Lagos state, Nigeria, I was introduced to the art of cooking Nigerian stew with dried ingredients when I travelled a different part of Western Nigeria.

Above is an image of fresh tomato in the same bowl with dried tomato. In this blog post, I would share with you how to make Nigerian Stew with dried ingredients.

Maybe you are just like me and you never knew dried tomatoes were sold in commercial quantities at the market. Well, the picture above is to show you that indeed dried tomatoes exist.

Before I continue, let me tell you about an online shop where you can buy Nigerian foods and ingredients and your purchase will be shipped to you free. Shop here

For a person who had lived most of her life in Lagos state, Nigeria, I was introduced to the art of cooking Nigerian stew with dried ingredients when I travelled a different part of Western Nigeria.

I love to learn new things and because of this, I was immediately fascinated that I decided to learn this unique way of to cook Nigerian stew.

I was equally amazed at the fact that I wouldn’t need to spend a lot of money to buy the stew ingredients.

Moment of truth, I didn’t really try it until one day, I didn’t have a lot of money but I had this unending craving for fried stew and white rice . So, I decided to cook the Nigerian stew with dried ingredients.

There are many stew recipes with unique ingredients, here are some recipes that you may also like.

How To Cook Chicken Stew

Quick Nigerian stew recipe

Goat Meat Stew Recipe

How To Cook Palm Oil Stew | Fish Stew

One common way of enjoying Nigerian stew is by combining it with white rice, bread, spaghetti, boiled potatoes, boiled yam and many more.

white rice and stew — White rice and stew

Without digressing further, the ingredients you would need for this recipe are listed below.

Nigeria Stew Ingredients

6 dried bell peppers
1½ cup dried tomatoes
¼ cup dried chilli pepper
1 mackerel fish
1½ cups cooking oil – palm oil or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon salt
2½ onions medium size
1 teaspoon seasoning
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon dried rosemary
4 eggs

I am aware that some people don’t like spicy foods so I would advice that you reduce the quantity of the dried pepper if you can not tolerate spicy foods.

To make cooking easy and smooth, I would prepare the ingredients first. Listed below are the preparation steps.

Nigerian stew Ingredients preparation

Make hard-boiled eggs by putting the raw eggs in a saucepan filled with water
Cover the Pan and cook for 15- 20 minutes to ensure that the eggs are well cooked
Allow the boiled eggs to cool down completely
Peel the egg shells and set the eggs aside.
Cut the mackerel fish in 4 or more pieces.
Clean and degut the fish to remove the intestine, fins and so on
Put the cleaned fish into a bowl lightly sprinkle salt on the fish.
Place frying pan on cooker
Pour cooking oil into the frying pan
Allow to the oil heat up well
Turn down the heat down
Put the fish into the hot oil
Fry both sides till then scoop out of the hot oil
Set the fried fishes aside
Peel the onions, Slice half and leave the remaining two (2) for blending.
Get a big bowl
Pour the dried tomatoes and peppers into the bowl
Add hot water and cover
Set aside for 1 hour to soften the peppers so that they can be properly cleaned.
Bring out the bowl with the soaked peppers
If the water used for soaking is still hot, add cold water to cool it down
Clean the peppers well – Click here to watch how to clean the peppers
Clean the peppers twice to be sure that they are properly cleaned
Pour the tomatoes, peppers into the blender.
Add peeled onions and water to the blender.
Blend to a smooth paste
Rinse out the blender with clean water

Now that all the necessary preparation have been done, it is time to cook .

Come along, let’s Make Nigerian Fried Stew with dried ingredients.

How to prepare Nigerian stew

Pour some of the cooking oil used to fry the fish into the pot you want to use to make fried stew.
Add the onions sliced earlier
Fry for about 1minute on medium heat
Then add the blended pepper mix
Seasoning to taste by adding salt, seasoning powder, dried thyme and curry powder.
Add water if the tomato and pepper mix is too thick
Mix well, then add the fried fishes
Put the boiled eggs also
Cook for 10 minutes first then check the sauce
Stir and taste the sauce to ensure it is up to you preference
Cover and cook for 5 more minutes.