Ndole
A Cameroonian stew of bitter greens, ground peanuts, beef and prawns cooked in a deep, creamy sauce flavoured with garlic and crayfish.
Photograph credit: Ndolé camerounais (image of Ndolé on Wikidata Q1131837) by PRA · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Where This Goes Wrong
Squeeze the greens very dry.
Stir the peanut paste often.
Use frozen ndolé leaves if you can find them.
How to Make Ndole
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Boil the beef with half the onions, the salt and the water for 40 minutes until tender. Keep the stock.
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Blend the peanuts, garlic, ginger and the remaining onions to a smooth paste with a little stock. Fry in the oil for 8 minutes, stirring, until darker.
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Add 400 ml of the stock and simmer for 10 minutes.
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Boil the spinach, kale and rocket in water for 3 minutes, drain and squeeze dry. Chop finely.
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Add the beef, greens, prawns and crayfish to the pot and simmer for 10 minutes. Scatter with the fried onions.
Why the Method Works
Ndolé is a national dish of Cameroon, served at weddings and on Sundays, and the leaves it is named for are bitter. Fresh ndolé leaves, from a Vernonia plant, are available frozen in African shops, and they must be boiled to remove their harshest bitterness before they go into the stew. Without them, a mix of spinach and kale with a handful of rocket gives a similar, gentler bitterness.
The sauce is the other half. Peanuts are skinned and ground to a smooth paste with onions, garlic and ginger. The paste is fried in oil until it darkens and smells sweet, then thinned with stock. Stir it often while it cooks. Peanut paste catches on the base very easily.
Beef is boiled first with onions until tender. Prawns, smoked fish and ground crayfish go in at the end, adding salt and depth. The greens are squeezed dry and stirred in last, cooked for 10 minutes until their bitterness softens into the sauce.
The finished stew is dark green-brown, thick and oily. It is served with boiled plantain, bobolo (fermented cassava sticks) or rice, and fried onions on top.
After You've Cooked It
Keeps in the fridge for 3 days and freezes for up to 3 months.
If You're Missing Something
- If you only have ground ginger, a quarter-teaspoon for each tablespoon of fresh is the ratio usually given; it tastes warmer and less bright than the fresh root.
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Good With
- Boiled plantain
- Bobolo
- Rice
- Fried fish
Ndole Nutrition Facts
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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