Most of you are true lovers and fans of Jollof rice; you love the meal so much that you can’t do without it, yet you know little about this popular delicacy. Nonetheless, there is a percentage of foodies who have a fair knowledge of jollof rice, however, the other percentage is larger.
For the large percentage (the delicious food enthusiasts who do not know much about Jollof rice), chefsbase as a food-oriented content delivery platform is here to educate you on all you need to know about the meal.
Jollof Rice
According to Wikipedia, Jollof (/dʒəˈlɒf/), or jollof rice, is a rice dish that originated in West Africa. The dish is typically made with long-grain rice, tomatoes, chillies, onions, spices, and sometimes other vegetables and meat in a single pot.
However, its ingredients and preparation methods vary across several regions. The dish’s origins are traced to the Senegambian region.
Jollof rice’s existence in different parts of West Africa brings about competition between the countries, particularly, Nigeria and Ghana, over whose version tastes better.
Also, In French-speaking West Africa, Jollof rice is known as riz au gras.
History of Jollof Rice
The origins of Jollof rice are not clear. West African food historian Fran Osseo-Asare notes a similar dish in the Senegambian region that was ruled by the Wolof or Jolof Empire in the 14th century, spanning parts of today’s Senegal, The Gambia and Mauritania, where rice was cultivated, and which is known as thieboudienne or thiebou djeun, which contains rice, fish, shellfish and vegetables.
If prepared with meat, it is called cheeb u yapp. Food and agriculture historian James C. McCann posited that it was unlikely that the dish could have naturally spread from Senegal to its current range since a similar cultural diffusion is not seen in “linguistic, historical or political patterns”.
Instead, he established that the dish spread with the Mali empire, especially the Djula tradespeople who dispersed widely to the regional commercial and urban centres, taking with them the economic arts of “blacksmithing, small-scale marketing, and rice agronomy” as well as the religion of Islam.
Marc Dufumier, an emeritus professor of agronomy, presents a more recent origin for the dish, which may only have appeared as a consequence of the colonial promotion of intensive peanut cropping in central Senegal for the French oil industry, and where commensurate reduction in the planted area of traditional millet and sorghum staples was compensated for by imports of broken rice from Southeast Asia.
This left local cooks with no choice but to use the then-unfamiliar product. The use of New World tomatoes, tomato paste, capsicum peppers (bell, chilli, paprika), Indian curry powder, Mediterranean thyme, and Asian rice varieties, may limit the origin of the current dish to no earlier than the 19th century, there being no evidence of the ingredients being locally cultivated or imported before this era.
In Senegal, oral traditions credit Penda Mbaye, a cook at the residence of one of the colonial rulers in Saint-Louis, Senegal, as having created the dish when she ran out of barley and substituted rice.
Jollof Rice Ingredients
Jollof rice chiefly consists of rice, cooking oil, tomatoes, onion, chillies, and often some combination of other ingredients such as tomato paste, bell pepper, garlic, ginger, thyme, curry powder, grains of selim, and bouillon cubes or stock; recipes vary from country to country and cook to cook.
Chicken, turkey, beef, lamb or fish are often cooked with or served with the delicacy. In some countries, other vegetables such as cabbage or carrots are added.
Some recipes are suitable for long-grain rice, some for short-grain, some for broken rice, and others for parboiled rice. Always the tomatoes, paste, onions, and chilis are sauteed in oil and simmered into a sauce which the rice is then cooked in.
What is the Importance of Jollof Rice?
Jollof is culturally essential in much of West Africa to the point there is a common saying, “A party without Jollof is just a meeting”. In Nigeria, the phrase, “See Jollof” means “see how much fun is being had” according to Nigerian food historian Ozoz Sokoh.
Since the 2010s there has been growing interest in West African foods in the Western world. Jollof food festivals have been held in Washington, DC, and Toronto.
“World Jollof Day” has been celebrated since 2015 on 22 August, gaining attention on social media. On 3 November 2022, the food was honoured with a Google Doodle.
In conclusion, Jollof rice has won for itself, the title of one of the most, if not the most popular and widely consumed Nigerian dishes. Statistically, more than 97% of the West African population enjoy eating the dish and it has become one of the darlings of the world’s population.
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