African Beef Stew – a popular mouth-watering stew and a traditional West African Stew that is often prepared in most homes, in a number of different ways. A must-have for Christmas gatherings and in everyday meal.
This is a popular and traditional West African Stew that is often prepared in most homes, in a number of different ways in countries like Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana – by varying the quantity of tomatoes, onions and spices.
Quite a lot of oil is used to cook the stew – often used to fry the tomatoes for a period of time to reduce the amount of acidity present in tomatoes. You know what? A good West African stew is flavorful and is rarely acidic.
You may remove some of the excess oil at the end before serving.
Rice and stew was once considered the quintessential West African Christmas meal. Of course, no Christmas table would be complete without it and an array of sumptuous dishes. Oh, how times have changed!
This tantalizing beef stew has evolved into an everyday meal, cooked with different cuts of meat and seafood and always present on restaurant menus. But to most people Christmas would never be complete without stew.
Here is my take on this mouth-watering African beef stew. Feel free to add vegetables such as carrots, green beans or green pepper. In Nigeria, it’s most often paired with African yam – fried or boiled. Rice and fried plantains are another good side dish option for this African beef stew.
Enjoy!
Watch How to Make It
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Tips and Notes:
- You can also let the meat simmer for about 3 hours for a fall-off-the-bones tender texture.
- You may replace canned tomatoes with fresh tomatoes but make sure you fry the sauce until it has completely dried before adding liquid. You might have to add more oil and watch out for burns.
- You can leave out the roma tomaotes; it works fine without.
- If you don’t have beef cubes on hand, you may replace it with bone-in beef meat.
- As suggested by one of the comments below, if you’re cutting back on the fat (oil), you can “cook off the water in the tomatoes by boiling the tomatoes until all the water is gone. Once the water cooks off, add some oil (olive oil works well) to fry the tomatoes.”
- Substitute Maggi powder with chicken bouillon.
Recipe was first published on Feb 2014 and has been updated with new photos, tips and notes and a video.
African Beef Stew
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Ingredients
- 1-2 pound stew beef , cut in small pieces
- 1/2 -1 cup oil (Canola, Vegetable or Corn) , adjust as needed
- 1 medium yellow onion
- 4 roma tomatoes , they are less acidic
- 4 peeled garlic cloves
- ¼ cup chopped parsley
- 3-4 tablespoon celery leaves
- ½ -1 scotch bonnet pepper , optional
- 1-2 basil leaves
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- 1 canned tomatoes sauce , 14 ounce
- ½ teaspoon curry powder
- 1 teaspoon white pepper
- 1-2 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon Maggie powder or beef bouillon powder
- 1-2 green onion , sliced
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Boil beef with salt, pepper and some chopped onions in a medium pot until tender. It will take approximately 30 minutes or more, depending the cut of beef and how you like your beef cooked. I sometimes use the pressure cooker to shorten the process. Reserve the stock for later use.
- Add 1 cup oil to the pot/pan and brown the beef for about 5-10 minutes. Remove and set aside.
- In a blender, blend the onions, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, celery, thyme, basil and scotch bonnet pepper
- Gently pour the blend of puree ingredients, and tomatoes puree in the saucepan, add curry powder, white pepper , smoked paprika and bouillon powder bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes.
- Then return browned beef and simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes.
- Stir the pot frequently to prevent the sauce from sticking to the pot. -Occasionally adding beef stock or water as needed to prevent burns
- Finally add green onions. Adjust seasonings, sauce consistency with water/stock and salt.
- Serve warm with desired side dish.
Tips & Notes:
- Feel free to add vegetables such as carrots, green beans or green pepper
- You may remove some of the excess oil at the end before serving.
Nutrition Information:
Amy says
My son and i made this together .. and although the directions were somewhat unclear this is what we did based on what we could figure out.
First we cut 2.5 lbs of top sirloin. Cut up a whole onion. Added steak, onion, 4 cups of water. A little bit of curry powder, onion powder, salt and pepper, seasoning salt and some garlic powder and 2 tablespoons beef bullion.
We simmered the meat, on low for about 2 hours.
In the meantime we made the tomato purée with all the ingredients suggested. While the meat was simmering, we fried the sauce in 1/2 cup of avocado oil. This took about 30 minutes to cook down… this is really important because it removes any acidity in the tomato’s. We put it on the back burner while the meat continued to cook and become tender almost falling apart. We drained the juice from the meat and saved it for stock for a different recipe.
We transferred the beef and onions into a skillet to crisp it up, then put it everything back in the original pot we used to cook the beef. We let that simmer for about 30 minute.
It turned out amazing! We added some extra spices like chili flakes and cayenne pepper to turn up the heat, but next time we will add an extra pepper to the purée instead. After all was said and done it turned out AMAZING!! I’m not a fan of a lot of ethnic foods with curry and this was just the right amount. We omitted nothing from this recipe but added a few things to spice it up. It’s a 5 star recipe for sure. Just wish the instructions were more clear as we had to figure some things out on our own.
Immaculate Bites says
Thank you for sharing this, Amy!
Nancy says
Delicious! I made it a few weeks ago and used pork instead, since that’s what I had on hand. I froze some and tonight, as a Nor’easter rages in Connecticut, I’ll be savoring your scrumptious stew!
Sissi says
I’ve never commented on a recipe before but this is the third recipe I’ve made from you and once again it’s PERFECT. I’ve also made your jerk chicken and southern Mac and cheese. My boyfriend is Nigerian and I’m Rwandese and we’ve really been enjoying these African/Caribbean flavours! I’ve bookmarked your page and can’t wait to try more recipes!
Imma Adamu says
Thank you so much for the feedback and appreciation, Sissi!
Happy cooking <3
Kate Belair says
Wow! I just made this for dinner tonight. Left out the pepper to be kid friendly. It is exceptional! So glad we tried it!
ImmaculateBites says
So glad you did. Thanks so much.
JoyRae says
I made this for a friend from Sudan. He said it was very authentic.
Paula says
I’m making this today for a Nigerian friend. The recipe calls for beef bouillon and in the instructions it says chicken bouillon to replace maggi seasoning. Which is it?
imma africanbites says
Hi Paula. Beef or chicken bouillon works fine.
Patricia Hardy says
Delicious beef – the best beef stew I have ever made! Frying the beef and then frying the pepper mix and combining them with fresh spices, made for perfection. This will definitely be a family favorite.
Lolo says
This is so delicious, my daughter who is a picky eater loved it so much and licked her plate literally
ImmaculateBites says
Hahaha 🙂 . Oh my! I used to do that a lot when I was a kid! I am so glad you loved this recipe. Thanks for the feedback.
Myra Foster-Smith says
This looks and sounds amazing!
If I want to use bone in beef, which kind do I purchase?
Thank you so much!!
Imma Adamu says
I have a huge preference for neck bones because it has some fat and thereby adds flavor, but to be honor, any bone works. There are some cultures that utilize cow foot in that african stew and they love it. Can’t say i’ve tried that… but use whatever you have in your home and essentially with the ingredients the outcome should be the same. Please come back and let me know how it turned out.
Tameka says
Another good one!
Sara says
Would this be a good stew to go with fufu? When I was a kid there was a couple from Africa that babysat me and they had made fufu and some sort of stew to go with it. It was spicy yet sweet and had sooooo much flavor. To this day I still crave that meal and have been wanting to try making my own
imma africanbites says
Yes, this pairs well with any starchy side like fufu, rice and plantains.
Felix says
In Ghana, we eat Fufu with soups and not stews.
Chuck says
My mother is Congolese and we ate Bukari (fu fu) with nearly everything.
Irma says
Is there an adequate substitute for celery leaves?
ImmaculateBites says
Celery stalk would work or leave it out completely.
siewe says
the stems are better than leaf
Tiana says
I loved this! I accidentally put too much habanero, so it ended up being pretty spicy. The flavors were unlike anything I’ve tried before; this is definitely something I will be making again. Thanks for sharing!
jasmine says
Do you have the instant pot recipe for this dish?
imma africanbites says
Hi, Jasmine. I haven’t tried it in an instant pot yet. So can’t provide you exact times and procedure.
Kathy says
I just made this and it is delicious! Thank you for the recipe! My whole family loved it.