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Peanut stew (also maafe or mafe) is a staple in West African cuisine made from steak, lamb, or chicken with a base of aromatics, tomatoes, and peanut butter.
Transcript
00:00Hey everybody, welcome to Brooke's One Pot.
00:08I'm Brooke and this is the show where I'm going to teach you how to make our most delicious
00:12and most popular weeknight meals all using just one pot, one pan, or one baking sheet,
00:17and as few dishes as humanly possible.
00:20For tonight's dinner, we're going to head across the Atlantic Ocean to West Africa to
00:25make my West African-inspired peanut chicken stew.
00:28It's warm, it is creamy, it's super hearty, packed with veggies and meat, everything you
00:33need to stick to your ribs on a cold weeknight.
00:44Peanut stew is a West African staple meal.
00:47You might hear it called groundnut stew over there, but peanuts and groundnuts are the
00:50same thing.
00:51It's usually made with whatever meat you have on hand, like steak or lamb, or in this case,
00:55chicken thigh.
00:56The best part is creamy peanut butter.
00:59I know you're thinking, you're really adding peanut butter to soup?
01:01But yes, please trust me, please trust thousands of years of Africans.
01:04They know what they're doing.
01:05All the equipment you'll need for this recipe is a medium Dutch oven, a large glass measuring
01:10cup, a half teaspoon measuring spoon, a pair of tongs, and your favorite wooden spoon.
01:14To make our marinade, the first thing we're going to do is start our seasoning mix base.
01:18And for this seasoning mix, I'm going to grab a little bit of cardamom and cumin.
01:23Those are the two spices that I feel like I associate most with West African cuisine.
01:26I'm going to go in with a quarter teaspoon of cardamom and a half teaspoon of cumin,
01:31two teaspoons of kosher salt, and a teaspoon of just some freshly cracked black pepper.
01:38I'm going to mix this up, and then this is a spice mix that we're going to use throughout
01:41the cooking process.
01:42So a little bit's going to go in the marinade, but then a little bit more will go into the
01:46soup itself later.
01:47I'm chopping four cloves of garlic for this marinade, but I'm only going to use half of
01:51it for the marinade.
01:53I'm going to use the other half in the base of the stew.
01:56I like to add echoes of the flavor all throughout each step in the dish so that you're not just
02:00getting one-dimensional notes of ginger, one-dimensional notes of garlic.
02:04You get a little bit everywhere.
02:05It's kind of nice.
02:06In addition to the garlic that we're adding to the marinade, we're also going to do a
02:09little bit of chopped ginger, and you want to make sure you get your ginger small enough
02:14so that nobody's getting any of those fibrous woody bits.
02:16But just like the garlic, we're only going to use half of this ginger because we're going
02:20to use the rest to start the base of our stew.
02:23Let's get our marinade on.
02:24To marinate this chicken, I'm going to use a Ziploc bag.
02:27Not only is that going to save me from having to use a bowl that I would have to wash later,
02:32but it's also going to help give me better marinade coverage on my chicken because you
02:37don't have all that air.
02:38To this plastic bag, we're just going to add two and a half teaspoons of our seasoning
02:43mix.
02:44And remember, we're saving the rest of the seasoning mix for our stew later, so don't
02:47throw that out.
02:48You can keep smelling it.
02:51That smells so good.
02:52Oh my god.
02:53Wait, it smells like Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and Fourth of July all in one.
02:59And then we're going to add half of our garlic and half of our ginger.
03:02And then last but not least, just to make sure everything sticks together, we're going
03:06to drizzle about a tablespoon of oil in here.
03:08Just make sure everything's all well blended up.
03:11All right, once everything feels nice and evenly mixed, we're going to let this marinate
03:14for at least 15 minutes.
03:15But if you've got an extra hour, two hours, give yourself that time.
03:18It's only going to add more flavor and that's never a bad thing.
03:22For the base of the stew, I've just got some aromatic veggies, obviously onion because
03:27onion goes in everything.
03:29So this one, we're just going to give a medium chop.
03:33Not totally small, but you don't want big, huge, chunky pieces that are going to take
03:37a long time to cook.
03:38You see what we're working with?
03:39Like that big.
03:40Usually, whenever you see an onion, you know a carrot's not too far behind and this stew
03:43is no different.
03:45We are going to do a similar size dice that we did for the onion.
03:48Next, we've got a medium sweet potato.
03:51You could peel this, but honestly, I don't peel it when I'm making this stew.
03:55One, because sweet potato skins have a lot of nutrients in them.
03:58For a less nutritional reason, it's just easier to not peel them because the skin will soften
04:02up to the point where it's not going to be too tough.
04:04It's not going to be too fibrous when you eat it in the stew.
04:06This one, we're going to cut into medium-ish small pieces.
04:09You want things to be able to fit on a soup spoon.
04:12And then, last but not least, we've got tomatoes.
04:15Some chunky, big beef steak or Roma tomatoes are perfect for this.
04:18And then this, we're going to just chop into similar pieces that we've chopped everything else.
04:23This one, you can maybe even leave a little bit chunkier because the tomato is going to
04:26break down quite a bit once we get it into the pot.
04:28Then for a little bit of herby earthiness, we've got some fresh thyme.
04:32You'll need about a tablespoon of fresh thyme.
04:34Last but not least, for our flavor agents, we have the all-powerful scotch bonnet chili.
04:39This is a chili that's really common in a lot of West African and Caribbean cooking.
04:44But the key to not burning yourself is to make sure...
04:52You wear a glove.
04:53Oh, it's on the wrong hand.
04:54Goddamn.
04:55Okay, now I'm ready.
04:57We're going to cut this in half because I do want a little bit of the heat from the
05:00seeds in this stew.
05:02But if you're a little bit spice-averse, you can definitely take the seeds out at this point.
05:06In the time that it took me to chop everything, our chicken got to take a nice marinade bath.
05:11And this is ready to go into the Dutch oven.
05:15But first, I'm going to add a little bit of oil.
05:16You just want to make sure you're adding these in an even layer to the bottom of the pot.
05:21I'm going to let these go for about five to six minutes per side or until they get golden
05:25brown and they'll start to develop a little bit of a crust on the outside.
05:28I'm going to go ahead and just transfer these to a clean plate, and these are just going
05:33to hang out while we finish the rest of our stew.
05:35Into this hot pot, I'm going to add these carrots and onions that I chopped up.
05:39Now I'm going to use the rest of that seasoning mix that I made, put that right on the veggies.
05:44We're going to cook this down until they start to soften, so about five minutes.
05:48We're going to keep building these aromatics and add the rest of that garlic and ginger
05:53and our scotch bonnet peppers.
05:56Ooh!
05:57Ooh, ooh!
05:58Ooh, that got up in my nose.
05:59Once you smell the garlic and ginger start to get really fragrant, you can go ahead with
06:03your fresh thyme or dried thyme if you don't have fresh thyme on hand.
06:06We're going to go ahead and add two tablespoons of tomato paste.
06:10I love tomato paste in a tube.
06:12One, the can feels super wasteful, and the tube is always really good for eyeballing.
06:16If you're comfortable doing that, it'll help you save some dishes.
06:18We're going to just cook that for about four minutes until the tomato paste starts to turn
06:22a really dark and deep red.
06:24Last thing for this stage is to add our chopped tomatoes to the pot.
06:27These tomatoes have a lot of water in them, so it's going to help dislodge anything that's
06:31stuck to the bottom of your pot.
06:32And I'm going to hit that with a couple big pinches of salt, enough to make it about two
06:36teaspoons.
06:37Then I'm just going to let these tomatoes break down for about 20 minutes until they
06:41start to get nice and jammy.
06:43So I promised you a bop, of course, and the bop for this has a little bit of a backstory
06:48to it.
06:49If you can't tell or didn't know, my background is African American, which a lot of times
06:53means that you're not entirely sure what country your ancestors came from.
06:57They got invited to the USA under some suspicious circumstances, so a lot of that came with
07:03the destroying of my history, essentially.
07:05But with the advent of DNA testing, I've been able to figure out who I am and where I come
07:10from.
07:11And I found out that the largest part of my DNA hails from Nigeria.
07:15Learning more about where I come from is what gave me the desire to develop this recipe.
07:19I wanted to understand the flavors and the textures of Nigerian and West African cooking.
07:23Now, of course, with the exploration of any culture, the food has to go with the music.
07:28For this Nigerian slash West African dish, I decided to pick a Nigerian artist, the Grammy
07:33award-winning artist Thames.
07:35Her song Free Mind is something that just makes me feel warm, and it makes me feel free,
07:40and it makes me feel comforted.
07:42And that's what this stew does.
07:43All right, these tomatoes have been cooked to hell, which is good.
07:47That's what we wanted.
07:48They're nice and jammy now, and they're going to give us that nice umami flavor.
07:51So this is the point where we add our peanut butter in.
07:53We're going to do about a cup of peanut butter.
07:55To this peanut butter, I'm going to just whisk in about a cup of chicken broth.
08:01And this is just to like loosen the peanut butter up a little bit so that when we add
08:04it to the stew, it doesn't like lump up and form any like weird, lumpy, peanut buttery
08:09pockets.
08:10Just going to add that to the pot with our veggies.
08:13And then we're going to just slowly add the rest of this broth to the pot while this starts
08:17to thin out a little bit.
08:19And we're going to end up using this whole carton of broth.
08:21It's about four cups.
08:22So the reason you want to add this broth while you're whisking is because peanut butter can
08:27act really weird, especially if you don't have like an all-natural peanut butter, and
08:31it can tend to seize up.
08:33Also, you want to go with smooth peanut butter for this, because this is going to get topped
08:36later with some chopped up crushed peanuts.
08:38But you don't necessarily want that like over-crunchy, peanutty, gritty bite that you would get from
08:42chunky peanut butter.
08:44Last but not least is just to add our sweet potatoes.
08:47We're going to let this simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes.
08:50While this simmers and thickens and our potatoes get nice and tender, I'm going to go ahead
08:55and start shredding this really flavorful chicken that we seared off earlier.
08:59I've been resisting the urge to eat it this entire time, so everyone clap for me.
09:04When you're shredding this chicken, make sure you get it into pieces that are small enough
09:08to fit on a spoon, but big enough so that you can tell people that there's chicken in
09:11the stew and they actually believe you because they can see it.
09:13Y'all, it smells so freaking good in here, and I kind of just want to live inside of
09:18this pot.
09:19But before I do that, I'm going to take out these pepper halves, because they've already
09:23done their job.
09:24They've already lended their spiciness to the soup.
09:27And the last thing I want is for somebody to chomp down on one of those, because they're
09:31not going to enjoy themselves very much.
09:33So last thing we need to do is just return the shredded chicken to the pot and give that
09:38a good stir.
09:41This is sort of my secret ingredient for soups and stews in general, but I have to say, this
09:45is definitely not a traditional African ingredient by any means.
09:50It's fish sauce.
09:51Fish sauce has just the right amount of umami.
09:54It's got a little bit of bitterness to it, and I think just a splash of this will really
09:59make this sing and shine, and it's going to be the thing that makes you come back for
10:03bite after bite.
10:04All that's left to do is plate this baby up.
10:06So I've got some steamed white rice, and I know what you're thinking.
10:10Aha!
10:11Where did that rice come from?
10:12That's an extra pot.
10:13But you're wrong.
10:14I cooked the rice in this pot before I made the stew.
10:17But you guys know how to make rice, so you don't need me to show you that.
10:20So I'm going to ladle this up, and it should be nice and thick like this.
10:24Then I'm just going to hit it with a pinch of fresh thyme, and some roasted peanuts.
10:35Since I know how much kick this soup has to it, I'm going to put a little bit of rice
10:38in my bite.
10:39I think that's going to help tame some of the heat.
10:46Excuse me for a minute, everybody.
10:49There's so much of an umami bomb going on in here.
10:52So between those reduced tomatoes and the fish sauce, and then also just like the earthiness
10:56from the peanuts and the thyme.
10:57This is everything a hardworking girly wants at the end of a long workday.
11:02I'm going to actually eat the rest of this.
11:03I usually take a break to go do the dishes, but this deserves my full attention.
11:07So I'm going to eat the rest of this bowl, and then I'm going to do the dishes.
11:09But lucky for me, this was a low dish day, so it shouldn't take long.
11:18This stew recipe has become so near and dear to my heart.
11:21Not only because it's delicious, but also because it taught me a little bit about myself
11:25and where I come from.
11:26Hopefully this inspires you to dig into your own culinary history, and to cook more African
11:30food because it's absolutely delicious.
11:32So if you want more ingenious soups and stews just like this one, keep it right here at
11:36cookadish.com.

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