One of the highlights of my foodie experience in Lagos, Nigeria was suya – a street food that is common across Western Africa, that goes by many names. The expensive beef suya from Terra Kulture was tender and flavoured perfectly. Even though I (generally) gave up beef a year ago I would be okay eating that beef suya regularly because it was just so darn good.
The cheap beef suya from a street vendor was tough and chewy (an obviously cheaper cut of meat) but the seasoning was awesome and it had a spicy kick to it. Grilling the meat over charcoal also added a bunch of flavour.
I purchased suya seasoning from a grocery store chain in Lagos, and I’ve still yet to try it. I’ll have to compare it to the homemade recipes I’ll try.
This recipe was from Precious Core, an African lady in the US with a number of recipes of foods that I tried when I was in Lagos. I was excited to know that I could use dried peanut butter powder to make the suya seasoning because I had some in my cupboard that I didn’t know what to do with! I didn’t need to buy anything special to make the recipe – a total bonus for me. After watching her video I put the dried chili peppers in the dry container of my VitaMix to grind them up fine. Then I put all the other ingredients into the VitaMix to make sure they were well blended. I assumed the dry container would be best for this because these are dry goods… not so much – they got all stuck to the bottom of the container around the blade and I had to shake and stir the container to get the mix moving. Maybe next time I’ll use the regular wet container and see if it’s any better. I didn’t push the mix through a strainer as she suggests because the suya seasoning that I had in Nigeria was full of ginger strings and other texture.
I used the suya spice on chunks of chicken thighs instead of thinly sliced strips. Since I didn’t actually have chicken suya in Nigeria, I’m not sure what cuts of chicken they use. I wouldn’t say that the suya spice was representative of the suya that I had in Nigeria, but then again it may taste quite different used on thinly sliced beef, grilled over charcoal instead of gas. I served my chicken over salad and it made for a nice and light summer meal.
All in all, I really liked the recipe from Precious Core. I would add more chilis next time (or maybe my spices are just too old!) to give it a bit more of a kick. I think if I had used fresh roasted peanuts, fresh ginger and fresh chilis it would be pretty darned close to what I had experienced in Lagos. Thank you Miss Precious for a great recipe, and I look forward to trying out other West African dishes (yay jollof rice!) from your website 🙂
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