How to Cook Abacha (African Salad) Properly

Everybody outside the East calls it African salad. In Igbo homes it is just abacha, and it is not a salad in any sense a Western kitchen would recognise.

What you need

• Abacha, dried shredded cassava
• Ugba, fermented oil bean
• Red palm oil
• Akanwu, edible potash
• Ground crayfish, pepper, salt, onion
• Garden eggs, utazi, smoked fish or kpomo

Step one: soak the abacha

1. Cover in cool water five minutes until the strands separate.
2. Drain thoroughly and squeeze gently. Wet abacha ruins the dish.

Step two: the ncha. This is the whole dish.

1. Dissolve a pea-sized piece of akanwu in a little water.
2. Let it settle, then pour off the clear liquid and discard the grit.
3. Whisk it into your palm oil a little at a time.
4. Keep going. The oil thickens, turns opaque and goes bright yellow.

That colour change is the point of abacha. Without potash the oil stays red and everything slides around. With it, the sauce clings to every strand.

Too much akanwu tastes soapy. Start smaller than you think.

Step three: bring it together

1. Stir crayfish, pepper and salt into the yellow oil.
2. Fold in the rinsed ugba.
3. Add the drained abacha and mix until every strand is coated.

Step four: toppings

Garden eggs, utazi shredded finely, smoked fish, kpomo, boiled egg, onion.

Where people go wrong

• Skipping the potash. The dish does not work without it.
• Not draining the abacha.
• Too much ugba. It is strong.
• Not straining the akanwu water. Grit in the teeth.

Serve at room temperature with cold malt or Guinness. We ship all five core ingredients across the United States.