A watercolour of a thick ochre peanut stew with yellow sweetcorn beside white rice
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from West African groundnut stew

Peanut and sweetcorn stew

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Peanut butter.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
4
Burners
1
Pans
2
Water
0.9 L
Active
12 min
Total
32 min

Ingredients

One of the best things peanut butter does, and a dish that looks improbable on paper and works completely on the plate.

  1. Rice on first if you have the second pan, or cooked after and the stew reheated.
  2. Oil, dried onion two minutes. Ginger and chilli, twenty seconds.
  3. Passata and the stock cube with 300 ml water. Simmer five minutes.
  4. Peanut butter loosened with a ladle of the hot liquid in a mug first, then stirred back in. Adding it straight to the pan gives you lumps you will not get rid of.
  5. Twenty minutes at a low simmer, stirring now and then. It thickens and the oil comes to the surface. That splitting is the dish being ready, not broken.
  6. Drained sweetcorn in for the last three minutes.

The sweetcorn is doing a real job: the stew is rich and fairly monotone, and sweet bursts of corn break it up.

Serves 4 with the rice.

What this was adapted from

West African groundnut stew: peanut paste cooked into a tomato base until it splits and enriches

  • raw groundnut paste → shop peanut butter

    Peanut butter is groundnut paste with salt and sometimes sugar already in it, so the dish needs less seasoning and no added sweetness. Check the jar is not one with added palm oil if you can.

  • fresh chilli, ginger and onion → chilli flakes, ground ginger and dried onion

    The base is cooked down to a paste regardless, which is where dried aromatics do best. The heat becomes flatter and more even than fresh chilli gives.