The World Table

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Ghanaian · Soup

Nkatenkwan (Groundnut Soup)

  • Intermediate
  • 35 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

aromatic · rich · fiery · warm-spiced Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, richness that coats and comforts, fading in warm spice.

Ingredients

  • 1.2 kg chicken, jointed
  • 250 g unsweetened groundnut paste
  • 4 ripe tomatoes
  • 2 onions
  • 40 g ginger, peeled
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 2 scotch bonnet chillies
  • 4 garden eggs, halved
  • 1.2 litres water
  • 2 tsp salt

Equipment

Grater / zester

The skills inside

Reducing a sauceFrying the paste until the oil splitsSalted water & the float test

Allergen screen

Found: egg · peanuts

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Season the chicken with salt, half the ginger and one grated onion, then set it over low heat with a splash of water, covered, until it gives up its own juices and the flesh stiffens.
  2. Blend the tomatoes with the second onion, the garlic, the rest of the ginger and the chillies, pour into a wide pot and boil hard, stirring, until it darkens and the raw smell is gone.
  3. Slake the groundnut paste with 500 ml warm water, whisking to a smooth cream with no grain left in it, then stir it into the pot.
  4. Add the chicken with its juices, the garden eggs and the remaining water; simmer uncovered, stirring the base every few minutes, until the soup coats a spoon and a slick of red gold oil rises and holds on the surface.
  5. Lift out the garden eggs, crush them and stir them back for body, then season and serve with rice balls.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

  • A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
  • Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
  • The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
  • Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
  • Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

  • It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
  • The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
  • The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
  • The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
  • Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Nkatenkwan (Groundnut Soup) Technique: Reducing a sauceThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Ghanaian kitchen