How to Cook Nigerian Spinach Stew (Efo Riro)

Efo Riro is a popular Nigerian dish commonly eaten with a carbohydrate of choice. It is basically spinach or kale (or whatever greens) in a tomato based sauce with protein garnishes.  I decided to try my hand at following a recipe of sorts to see how it turns out. Check it out and let me know what you think! And wait till the end for my taste review!

1. Start with cooking your protein of choice. I select beef and shrimp (yum!)

 

2. Prepare tomato sauce by blending red peppers, tomatoes and onions (include scotch bonnets if you want extra flavour and spice)

3. Allow peppers to boil and add seasonings including salt

4. Wash and add locust beans to the cooking sauce

5. Wash and drain the stockfish or whatever other fish or additional protein of choice

6.  Add palm oil for the authentic Nigerian taste. Allow pepper to fry and for oil to rise to the top. Palm oil is the one thing I hadn’t added in the past when making this dish but decided to try this time. 

7. Add your main proteins. In this case cooked beef cubes, tripe and shrimp were added to the fried pepper.

8. Add your choice of vegetable to the sauce which in this case was spinach.

9. You may add beef stock from boiling your beef cubes for extra flavour.

Voila! the finished product 

Taste Review:

Adding the palm oil gave the dish an authentic Nigerian taste that i hadn’t really tasted before when making this dish in the past. Although, for the future I would want to try using fresh spinach leaves rather than frozen and maybe mix a bit of kale with the spinach too just to see if it changes the taste.

Let me know what you think and share your tips for perfecting the Nigerian Efo Riro recipe !

#PursuePurpose

Mo 🙂