Ndolé (Cameroonian Bitterleaf and Peanut Stew)
Cameroon's national dish: bitterleaf wrung through changes of water to draw out its bitterness, then simmered into a ground-peanut sauce with beef and smoked fish. Washing the leaves properly and never letting the peanut sauce boil are what make or break it.
Ingredients
- The leaves (what the dish is named for)
- Bitterleaf (ndolé) · prepared frozen from an African grocer is the surest route500 g
- Spinach + mustard greens · for bitterleaf: 400 g spinach plus 100 g mustard greens. Far less bitter
- Peanut sauce
- Raw peanuts · skinned; or 200 g unsweetened peanut butter250 g
- Onions2
- Garlic4 cloves
- Ginger20 g
- Oil · swap half for palm oil if you have it5 tbsp
- Savoury base
- Beef shank · cut thick against the grain500 g
- Smoked fish · dried cod or pollock substitutes; flesh only100 g
- Dried shrimp · ground fine, standing in for crayfish3 tbsp
- Stock cube1
- Hot chili · left whole1
- Salt · at the end
- To serve
- Plantain · boiled or fried — the canonical pairing
- Rice or fries · as in the photo; restaurants serve it this way too
Steps
- ⏲ 30 min
Prepare the leaves. If they're fresh bitterleaf, soak them in salted water and wring them by hand through 5–6 changes of water, until the rinse water no longer runs dark. Then boil 10 minutes and squeeze dry. Rush this and the dish is inedibly bitter. Prepared frozen ndolé only needs a rinse.
- ⏲ 45 min
Simmer the beef with one chopped onion, the stock cube and salt in water to cover, about 45 minutes. Lift out the meat and keep the stock.
- ⏲ 20 min
Boil the raw peanuts 15 minutes, drain, and blend with a little of the stock into a thick paste. Skip this if you're using unsweetened peanut butter — never a sweetened one.
- ⏲ 6 min
Fry the remaining onion, the garlic and ginger, all chopped, in the oil for 5 minutes. Add the ground dried shrimp and the whole chili for another minute.
- ⏲ 20 min
Add the peanut paste and 500 ml of the stock and simmer gently 15–20 minutes, stirring throughout. Never let it boil hard — peanut sauce splits and catches on the bottom of the pan fast.
- ⏲ 10 min
Return the beef and the flaked smoked fish and simmer 10 minutes more.
Stir in the squeezed leaves and cook just 5–8 minutes; longer and the colour dies. Season with salt and serve with boiled plantain or rice.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Prawn ndolé: Fresh prawns instead of beef, added in the last 5 minutes. Common in coastal Douala.
- Fish ndolé: Smoked fish alone. Lighter, and quicker without the meat.
- With palm oil: Swapping half the oil for red palm oil takes the colour and aroma much closer to the original.
- With miondo or bobolo: Fermented cassava steamed in leaves — the most traditional accompaniment in Cameroon.
- Spinach only: Workable if bitterleaf is out of reach. With none of the bitterness, squeeze in a little lemon to rebalance. It's a different dish, but the peanut-sauce backbone survives.
Tips
- **Washing the leaves is the dish. Bitterleaf (Vernonia amygdalina) is exactly as bitter as the name says, and wringing it through changes of water is how that bitterness comes out. Half-done, no amount of care elsewhere saves it. Prepared frozen ndolé** from an African grocer is the surest route.
- Unsweetened peanut butter only. Most supermarket peanut butter carries sugar and hydrogenated oil, which sweetens the sauce. Look for peanuts (and salt) on the label and nothing else.
- Don't boil the peanut sauce. Bubbling, it splits and scorches on the bottom. Keep it barely moving and stir throughout.
- Keep the meat stock. It goes into blending the peanuts and into loosening the sauce. Plain water flattens the whole thing.
- Don't skip the dried shrimp. Ground crayfish is the savoury floor this dish is built on; finely ground dried shrimp gets close.
- Leaves last, and briefly. Five to eight minutes is plenty. Longer and the green turns brown.
- Widely regarded as Cameroon's national dish, originally from the Douala region. Plantain is the canonical side, though plenty of restaurants serve it with rice and fries, as in the photo.
Sign in to edit.
edits: 0 ·Edit history