Please wait, the site is loading...

Jollof rice


Serves: 6 as a main or 8 as a side
timePrep time: 30 mins
timeTotal time:
Jollof rice
Recipe photograph by Ant Duncan
Maybe the most popular dish in West Africa, this recipe for rice infused in a rich tomato-pepper broth is unifying and dividing all at once, with everyone claiming their take on it as the definitive version. Ours takes the best flavours with the addition of charring the peppers in the recipe before puréeing, to help add a smokiness to this jollof ‘party’ rice. If you’d rather keep it more traditional, skip the roasting and just use raw peppers instead

Serves: 6 as a main or 8 as a side
timePrep time: 30 mins
timeTotal time:

Rate this recipe
Print Print

Nutritional information (per serving)
Calories
421Kcal
Fat
9gr
Saturates
2gr
Carbs
75gr
Sugars
7gr
Fibre
4gr
Protein
9gr
Salt
0.6gr

Nadine Brown

Nadine Brown

When Nadine isn't busy developing delicious recipes and using her experience as a health food editor to create healthy treats, she's munching and reviewing her way around her beloved home town of Tottenham. Find out what she's cooking and eating on Instagram @n0sh.17
See more of Nadine Brown’s recipes
Nadine Brown

Nadine Brown

When Nadine isn't busy developing delicious recipes and using her experience as a health food editor to create healthy treats, she's munching and reviewing her way around her beloved home town of Tottenham. Find out what she's cooking and eating on Instagram @n0sh.17
See more of Nadine Brown’s recipes

Ingredients

  • 3 red peppers, halved and deseeded
  • 3 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 2 onions, roughly chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
  • 20g root ginger, roughly chopped
  • 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
  • 3 tbsp tomato purée
  • ½-1 Scotch bonnet chilli, stalk and seeds removed (or keep them in if you can handle the heat)
  • 2 tsp Caribbean-style curry powder
  • 1 tsp dried mixed herbs
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 350ml vegetable stock (made using 1 stock cube) - use gluten-free stock if required
  • 500g basmati rice, well rinsed
  • 15g unsalted butter

Step by step

Get ahead
Roast the peppers ahead of time, or fully prepare the broth to the end of step 3, up to 3 days ahead. Keep chilled. Leftover jollof will keep in the fridge for up to 2 days, but make sure that the rice is spread out and cooled rapidly, then chilled, for food safety.
  1. Preheat the oven to 220°C, fan 200°C, gas 7. Add the peppers to a lined baking tray, cut-side down, and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of oil. Roast for 35 minutes or until starting to blacken.
  2. Meanwhile, put the onions, garlic and ginger in a blender with 1 tablespoon of water. Blitz until completely smooth, adding a little more water if needed, then pour into a bowl. Clean out the blender and then add the charred peppers (including their skins), the tinned tomatoes and tomato purée, plus half or all of the Scotch bonnet depending on how much heat you want. Blitz until completely smooth.
  3. Heat the remaining oil in a large, deep pan. Add the onion mixture with a good pinch of salt and cook for 8-10 minutes until lightly golden, stirring. Add the curry powder and cook for a further minute before adding the tomato-pepper mixture, dried mixed herbs and bay leaves. Season, reduce the heat and cover the pan. Cook gently for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  4. Stir the stock into the sauce and bring to the boil before stirring in the rice and butter. Bring to the boil again then reduce the heat, cover the pan with a folded piece of foil and add a lid. Cook for 40-45 minutes over a very low heat. The rice should have absorbed all the liquid, be tender and should have caught a little at the bottom to help achieve the smoky flavour characteristic of jollof ‘party’ rice. Once cooked, remove from the heat but keep the lid on for a further 15 minutes to help infuse the flavours. Remove the bay leaves, fluff with a fork and serve.
     

You might also like...


We value your privacy

We use cookies to help give you the best experience on our site and to allow us and third parties to customise the marketing content you see across websites and social media. For more information see our cookie policy.

Cookie Preference Centre

Learn more about what each cookie category does and choose your settings (toggle right to opt in or left to opt out). Cookie policy


Strictly Necessary

These technologies are needed to enable our websites and apps to run and to keep it secure.

Sainsbury's Magazine

These technologies tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Cookie name Duration
PHPSESSID Until the browsing session ends
device_view 1 month
viewedRecipes 1 year
subscription-{popup-version-date}-PopupClosed 12 days

Vimeo

Enables Vimeo videos on the site

Cookie name Duration
_derived_epik 1 year

Constant Commerce

Enables shopping tools for recipe ingredients

Cookie name Duration
cc_a_h 10 years
cc_a_s Until the browsing session ends

DoubleClick

DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) is an integrated ad-technology platform that enables us to more effectively create, manage and grow high-impact digital marketing campaigns.

Cookie name Duration
DSID 10 days
IDE 1 year
RUL 11 months

Performance/Analytics

These technologies tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Google

Google Analytics tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Cookie name Duration
__gads 13 months
gadsTest Until the browsing session ends
_ga 28 months
_gat 1 minute
_gid 1 day
1P_JAR 1 month
ANID 10 days
CONSENT 18 years
NID 6 months
__Secure-3PAPISID 2 years
__Secure-3PSID 2 years
__Secure-3PSIDCC 1 year

Marketing/Targeting

These technologies help us decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you. We use this data to customise the marketing content you see on websites, apps and social media. They also help us understand the performance of our marketing activities. These cookies are set by us or our carefully-selected third parties.

Pinterest

Pinterest conversion tracking gathers conversion insights and builds audiences to target based on actions our visitors have taken on the site.

Cookie name Duration
_pinterest_ct_rt 1 year
_pinterest_ct_ua 1 year
_pin_unauth 1 year

Outbrain

These technologies tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Cookie name Duration
outbrain_cid_fetch 5 minutes
adrl 5 weeks
apnxs 6 weeks
criteo 2 months
obuid 6 months

Twitter

Twitter conversion tracking enables us to measure our return on ad spend by tracking the actions people take after viewing or engaging with our ads on Twitter.

Cookie name Duration
personalization_id 2 years
muc 2 years
ads_prefs 5 years
auth_token 5 years
dnt 5 years
guest_id 2 years
twid 5 years