How to Make DIY Ghanaian Jollof Rice

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This jollof rice recipe was sponsored by Air & Water. I didn’t receive compensation, but they did send me the pressure cooker to try out.

 

Recipes aren’t something I do here at Thrift Diving.

Like ever.

The first reason is because….well, this is a DIY blog. Here, it’s all about paint, power tools, and thrift stores.

Secondly, I suck at cooking!

But when you’ve got a hubby who’s like McGuyvor in the kitchen and could probably make a full course meal out of olive oil, ketchup, and stale fortune cookies, you best believe that they deserve their own platform to stand on at least once! LOL

The folks at Air & Water reached out to offer a pressure cooker in exchange for a blog post.

Since I’m not a food blogger (and who wants to work for a pressure cooker, anyway??) I was going to decline their offer.

But hubby wanted to do it.

As the master chef in our house, this family wouldn’t be as well-fed without hubby in the kitchen making us one of his amazing vegetarian creations (we’ve been vegetarians for the past 17 years).

Without hubby, I wouldn’t be able to complete the projects that I do, because he supports our family’s meal times and rarely complains about it. If it were up to me, the kids would eat Cheerios at least twice a week and frozen meals the rest of the week while Mommy slaves away in the garage. 🙂

He’s toyed with the idea of starting an African vegetarian food blog (hubby is from Ghana, West Africa), but that would mean my workload would increase 10-fold. I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet! LOL. But, I can at least open up the Thrift Diving platform every once in a while and share the self-dubbed Foodosaurus with you!

There’s this big debate circulating around about which country makes the best jollof rice (pronounced jawl-OFF), which is a tomato-based rice dish. (Of course, we’re rooting for Ghana!)

Typically, jollof rice also has hot peppers, onions, and whatever spices you’ve got lying around. His mom makes awesome jollof rice!

We were missing some of the ingredients, however, so hubby decided to make his own DIY version using the new Avalon Bay PC1000SS Pressure Cooker.

 

How to Make DIY Ghanaian Jollof Rice

Ingredients for DIY Ghanaian Jollof Rice

  • White rice
  • Tomato sauce (we used spaghetti sauce since it’s what we had on hand)
  • Red onions
  • Canned black beans
  • Soy sauce
  • Black Bean Garlic Sauce
  • Salt (to taste, as needed)
  • Whatever seasonings you’ve got on hand!

 

 

Since hubby makes a lot of rice in this house, he wanted to test out the pressure cooker with this DIY jollof rice recipe.

(I’m not a cook by any means, but there are a few things I am good at preparing, like vegetarian chili. So I’m excited to try the pressure cooker for that).

 

 

STEP 1: Add Your Olive Oil

Everything hubby makes around here starts with an olive oil base. That’s one thing I’ve learned from him! If you’ve got olive oil and onions, you’re off to a good start.

 

 

STEP 2: Toss in Diced Onions

Don’t mind our stained cutting board. 🙂

It’s time for an upgrade. LOL

 

 

He let the onions simmer in the oil for a few minutes until they softened.

 

 

STEP 3: Add the Black Bean Garlic Sauce

Hubby discovered this really tasty Black Bean Garlic Sauce recently and has been using it in everything. It adds a lot of flavor!

 

 

 

STEP 4: Mix in the Tomato Sauce

He also added the soy sauce, too. Again, it’s what we had on hand. Most jollof rice doesn’t use it, but it’s a flavor we’ve grown to love in this house. 🙂

 

 

STEP 5: Add Seasoning

I picked up some Adobe all-purpose at the grocery store recently. But at this point, I think you can add whatever seasoning you’ve got. Traditional jollof rice, however, uses peppers, so try adding some hot peppers if you have them!

 

 

STEP 6: Toss in the Black Beans

Jollof rice doesn’t have to have beans in it. But since we’re vegetarian, hubby usually likes to toss them in for added protein.

 

 

 

STEP 7: Finally, Add the Rice

The rice was the final addition before shutting the pressure cooker lid.

 

 

The pressure cooker has lots of settings but the rice setting was easy to find and set based on the type of rice (i.e. white) we were using.

He set the timer, too.

It was done in about 30 minutes.

 

 

When the rice was done, it looked delicious!

At first, I thought it looked too oily, but hubby said it was fine.

He knows best!

Usually, after it sits in the fridge overnight, it isn’t quite as oily.

But you can adjust however much oil you use in your sauteed base.

 

 

I added a pinch of salt for flavoring when it was done, and sliced up some of our favorite: avocado!

Can you believe that I had never eaten avocado until I met hubby at age 17??

True story!

Crazy, since we eat it all the time now.

Anyhow, it turned out really yummy!

If you’re a meat-eater, jollof rice goes well with chicken.

Since we’re vegetarians, we usually eat it with some kind of stew or vegetarian meat substitutes!

 

 

The best part for hubby, I’m sure, is that he had me in the kitchen!

I’m usually M.I.A. when he’s cooking! It was actually nice making dinner with him, even though I’m the one that had the camera and kept saying, “No, move your hand out of the way! Slow down! Wait! I didn’t catch that!” lol

Now that I’ve been schooled by hubby on how to make DIY Ghanaian jollof rice, there will be very few excuses I can use for why I can’t throw together some ingredients in the pressure cooker, huh? 😉

So have you ever heard of jollof rice? Do you own a pressure cooker? 

 

 

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8 Comments

  1. yum, this looks delicious! I’m definitely going to have to try this.

  2. “(and who wants to work for a pressure cooker, anyway??)” LOL. Ahh, pressure cookers… they may not be as glamorous as a brand new car, but they’re useful! 😉
    I’ll have to try making it without the soy sauce, it sounds right up my family’s alley. 😀 No one here is a chef, but how can you turn down olive oil, rice, beans, onions, garlic, and seasonings? You just can’t, that’s like the perfect meal! It’s so awesome that your hubby cooks healthy meals for you all, maybe he could borrow your camera when you’re not using it and write up recipes for an hour on the weekend or something to make a mini blog to start out with.
    I admit, I always get bored when DIY blogs switch to food blogs, but this is a welcome exception. Thanks to Foodosaurus for the post! Enjoy that pressure cooker, making rice over the stove is only exciting the first dozen times you do it, after all. 😉

    1. Food blogs bore me, too, Zovesta! 🙂 That’s probably because I hate cooking and I’m terrible at it (although I’ve got a few dishes that I make that kiiiiiinndddda turn out. LOL). Yeah, he even has a decent camera of his own that I bought him so I should encourage him to take more pics. We can put them up on Foodosaurus.com since I literally bought the domain name at the same time I wrote that post! 🙂 Keep you posted! lol

  3. I love my pressure cooker, it’s awesome. This sounds like something I should try with it. Thanks for linking up with #HomeMattersParty

  4. This sounds delicious, Serena. And this food blog was fun to read and easy to follow! My DIL has a similar machine and swears by it. I don’t know if it’s the same brand or not, though. Leave it to you to go out of your comfort zone once again. Kudos to your hubby!

    Donna

    1. Awww…thank you, Donna! It was really a fun, quick, and easy post! Hubby subscribes to my blog feed and he said to me today, “I read your post. It was good!” He enjoyed the kudos I gave him! Thanks so much for reading it! Yes, if you make something like this, you’ll love it! I’m curious to try the other functions. Glad to hear your DIL likes it. It seems like an essential kitchen tool! 🙂 Especially for people like me that hate to cook. Throw it in and forget about it!

  5. Suzy Rains says:

    I have never had West African food, but this sounds delicious and I will have to try it! Thanks, Foodosaurus!

    1. You called him Foodosaurus! Awwww!! I had to read your comment. He smiled, and so did Kojo, my 3-year-old. He’s the “Junior” Foodosaurus! LOL Thank you, Suzy!!

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