How to cook Banga Rice

Banga Rice is one of the traditional Nigerian rice recipes, it is prepared with palm fruit concentrate. In the video below, I used tinned palm fruit concentrate to cook the Banga Rice but you can prepare your own palm fruit concentrate from palm fruits.

Ingredients

• Long grain parboiled rice
  • If you are in the USA/UK, use 4 cups.
  • If you are in Nigeria, use 1 De Rica cup.
  • If you have a weighing scale, use 700g or 1.5lbs.
• 400g tinned banga (palm fruit concentrate)
• 2 smoked fish (smoked mackerels)
• 1 big stock cube
• 1 red onion (red onion recommended)
• 1 tablespoon ground crayfish
• 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
• Habanero pepper (to your taste)
• Salt (to taste)
• Scent leaves (to your liking)

Notes on the ingredients

1. You can used tinned banga or make your own.
2. I recommend red onions for Banga Rice but you can use any if you do not have red onions.
3. Habanero Pepper is atarodo, ose oyibo or atarugu.

Before you cook Banga Rice

1. Rinse and cut the red onions into small pieces.
2. Debone the smoked fish and break into big pieces.
3. Grind the cayenne pepper.
4. Dice the habanero pepper.
5. Grind the crayfish.
6. Rinse the scent leaves and set aside. No need to cut them.

Cooking Directions

1. Parboil the long grain parboiled rice. For the quantity of rice stated above, add the rice to boiling water, stir, cover the pot and once it boils again, leave to boil for 12 minutes or till you can easily cut the grain of rice with your finger nails.
2. Pour the parboiled rice into a sieve to drain out all the hot water. Rinse with cool water to cool it down as quickly as possible. Leave in the sieve to drain all the water.
3. Boil some water and use it to mix the banga concentrate. This is so that all the particles including sand (if any) will go to the bottom of the pot. You don’t want these in the rice.
4. Slowly decant the mix from step 3 above into the pot that you will use to cook the Banga Rice.
5. Add stock cube (crushed), crayfish, onions, salt and the ground cayenne pepper.
6. Cover and leave it to boil.
7. When it boils, add the parboiled rice.
8. Stir and make sure the water is at the same level as the rice. If you parboiled the rice correctly, the Banga Rice will be done by the time this same level of water dries.
9. Taste for salt and add some if necessary.
10. Cover and start cooking on medium heat.
11. When you can no longer see the liquid in the pot but it is not yet dry, add the scent leaves, diced habanero peppers and smoked fish on top.
12. Cover and continue cooking till all the liquid dries up.
13. When the water dries, stir very well and turn off the heat.
14. Leave to stand for 5 minutes before serving.

NAIJACHEF

My name is Abueze, welcome to my Nigerian food website, you will learn a lot on how to prepare Nigerian foods. Lets do it!

See author's posts