Tinned corned beef cooked into a red stew is everyday food across West Africa and well beyond it. How the tin first reached West African kitchens is not well documented, and we would rather say so than guess. What is documented is how much it came to mean. In The Ghana Cookbook, Fran Osseo-Asare writes that people carried tinned goods, Exeter corned beef among them, home from the cities as gifts, and that the stew “reminds me of Christmas in Ghana”. In Jamaica the same tin, called bully beef, is cooked down with tomatoes, onions and Scotch bonnet and eaten with rice.
The base is the thing. A West African red stew starts with tomato, pepper and onion fried in plenty of oil until the water has gone and the oil rises to the top, deep red. That frying is where the flavour comes from, and it is worth the patience.
- Rice first, in the second pan: rinse, 450 ml of water, a pinch of salt, boil, lid on, heat right down for 12 minutes, then off the heat with the lid on while the stew cooks.
- Heat the oil in the first pan. Add the dried onion and garlic for a minute, then the tomato purée. Fry the purée, stirring, until it darkens to brick red, three or four minutes.
- Add the chopped tomatoes, curry powder, herbs, hot sauce and crumbled stock cube. Fry on a lively heat, stirring often, about 10 minutes, until thick, glossy, and the oil has separated and pooled at the edges. Add a splash of water if it catches.
- Cut the corned beef into cubes and stir it in. It will break up as it warms, which is what you want: it melts into the sauce. Five minutes.
- Taste. Add no salt until you have, because corned beef carries a great deal of it. See corned beef.
Serve over the rice. It is also good with boiled yam, with bread, or stirred through pasta.
Cook this to the meal. Rice is the one thing in this cupboard you should not keep without a fridge. See the rice page for why reheating does not rescue it.
Serves 4.