Nigerian Beef & Chicken Stew

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Nigerian food is yummy! See more Nigerian recipes: http://bit.ly/NigerianRecipes See more information about this recipe by clicking “Show More” below.

How to Cook Nigerian Beef & Chicken Stew
Lots of info and tips here: http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/stews/beef-and-chicken-stew.html
How to make Tomato Stew video: http://youtu.be/m9lJGz3M80g
How to prepare the grilled chicken: http://youtu.be/holpA4AteBQ

Ingredients
For this video, I used:
• Fresh Plum Tomatoes (referred to as Jos Tomatoes in Nigeria, Tomate Pera in Spanish or Pomodoro Pera in Italian) — 1.5kg
• Tinned tomato paste: 600g
• Vegetable Oil: a generous amount (see the Tomato Stew video above)
• Whole Chicken (hen) — 1.2kg
• Beef: about 15 pieces of medium cuts
• Onions: 2-3 medium bulbs
• Habanero Pepper & Salt (to taste)
• Seasoning: 2-3 large stock cubes & Thyme (2 teaspoons)

Alternative ingredients:
1. Instead of the Nigerian thick tomato paste, you can use tatashe (Nigerian big red peppers) or 1.2kg of the watery tinned Tomato Puree sold outside Nigeria.
2. Vegetable oils include: Sunflower oil, Groundnut oil, Turkey oil. Though it is regarded as healthy, NEVER use olive oil for Nigerian recipes: it has such a strong taste that the food will not taste Nigerian. Unless of course you are cooking it for you and your family and they don’t mind the taste.

Tips for the Chicken
***********************
I always use the female chicken (hen) to cook my Nigerian meals. It is harder than the rooster so it does not disintegrate during cooking. It is also tastier than the rooster so it makes the food taste better.

When cooking the Nigerian Chicken & Beef Stew, it is better to buy a whole chicken and cut it up into small pieces. The different parts of the chicken: the drumsticks, the wings, the hips etc have their own unique taste and altogether, these greatly improve the taste of the stew unlike when you use only drumsticks or only wings.

**** Frequently asked question about the way I cook chicken:
Flo, why don’t you add salt to your chicken at the beginning when you add other seasoning?

I do not add salt at the beginning when cooking chicken (or beef) because:
1. Salt closes the pores of the chicken (or beef) and prevents the natural flavour of the chicken from coming out into the surrounding stock. The blocked pores also prevents the seasoning you added to the chicken from going into the chicken to improve its flavour.
These will mean that the chicken will not taste as delicious as it should and the stock will mostly have the taste of seasoning, not much natural flavour from the chicken.

2. Salt hardens the chicken when you add it to the raw chicken (this is also the case for any food: yam, spaghetti, corn, beef, beans etc) hence it takes longer to get done. Even when the chicken is done, it is kind of hard and tough.
I only add salt when the chicken (or beef) is done. You will also see me do this when cooking beans, spaghetti, yam etc.