Groundnut Soup aka “Out of Africa Stew”
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp unsweetened almond butter
- 3 cups veggie broth or chicken stock
- 1 onion chopped
- ½ bell pepper chopped
- 1–2 tomatoes chopped
- 1 white fleshed yam boiled and cubed (we get ours at H-Mart)
- 1 clove garlic crushed
- salt and black pepper
- 1 hot chili pepper or spicy substitute to taste
- 2" slice fresh ginger minced
- ½ cup chopped okra
- 1 plantain cubed and boiled
- 1 small Japanese eggplant cubed (optional)
- 1 small yucca cubed and boiled
Instructions
- Boil water in a separate pot. Boil yam, plantain and yucca. Cook until tender.
- Sautee onion, pepper, tomato, garlic and ginger. Once soft, add okra, eggplant, and tomato.
- Once these items combine and breakdown, add all other ingredients, except almond butter and ½ the yam cubes. Simmer over medium heat until everything is tender.
- Mash the reserved yam cubes, and add to the stew, using this as a thickener. Add the almond butter and simmer for a few minutes more. Stir often to prevent the nut mixture sticking. Simmer until the soup is thick and smooth.
- Serve over Iyan or Fufu (dumpling made of yam or plantain flour), or eat as is.
Notes
To celebrate Passover and the connection to our people’s exodus from Africa, we began incorporating groundnut stew as an important main dish to connect with our African heritage. We often make this a meat meal by seasoning chicken pieces with whatever seasonings we have in the house that are Kosher for Passover and cooking it in the stockpot with the lid on for 3-4 minutes per side. My African friends buy “hard chicken,” and use it for this purpose, but I don’t know what makes chicken hard, and so different than what we eat here in the States.