ugali – A Kitchen In Uganda

Learn how to make mock posho/ugali using rice. This posho, served with a delicious rich and hearty stew, almost passes for the real one.

If you have been to most parts of East and Southern Africa, you will notice that maize is a popular ingredient in our diet. So much so that we pride ourselves in having multiple variations regionally. I remember my childhood dotted with multiple trips to the family garden to plant, weed and harvest this maize and then gleefully roast it by the fire or steam it overnight to be eaten as breakfast. In Fact if you have passed through the boarding school system (an educational system left behind by the colonial legacy and a type of rite of passage) on the continent, then you know that maize is on the menu 7 days a week, all school year. Rinse and repeat. Now imagine my utter shock and surprise when I realized that maize as we know it is not native to Africa. It was introduced through the transatlantic trade. It made me think of how a crop once foreign has seeped into the fabric of what we call society now. So much so that we cannot isolate ourselves from it. So as an adult I found myself craving this posho, something I once distasted in my younger years, that I decided to make a version of it using rice while in the diaspora. You will be amazed at how it almost tastes like actual posho. And with a rich hearty stew, this posho will hit all the right spots.

Posho Rice Recipe

What you will need:

3 C. Rice

Water

Observations:

Make sure to use rice that is well sorted.
Use short grain (regular) rice
You can use a ratio of 2:1 of white rice to brown rice to achieve brown posho.
You can reduce the rice in half f you are cooking for a lesser number of people.
If you want the posho to be a bit coarse, blend your rice well but not entirely smooth.
If you find your posho a bit hard and would like to water it down, add about a cup of water to the cooking posho, cover the pan and let the water come to a gentle boil, remove the lid and continue mingling to achieve your a desired thickness.

Method

Soak rice in water for 6+ hours or overnight.
Wash the rice and drain the water.
Add the soaked rice in a blender and add enough water to cover the rice.
Blend till smooth.
Place a pot/pan with 2 cups of water on fire and let it come to a boil.
Add your smoothly blended rice to the boiling water. Stir the rice continuously to avoid the formation of lumps.
The rice will start to thicken as you stir and eventually harden.
keep mixing using the cut and fold method to mingle the posho until a firm meal is formed. This can take from 10-15 minutes.
Reduce your fire, cover the pot and let the posho simmer for another 5 minutes.
Remove from fire and serve with your favorite rich hearty stew like this one, this one, this one, this one, or this one.

This is the last post for the year 2020! Thank you for always supporting this blog. See you in February of 2021. Happy holidays and a Happy New Year in Advance!

Use #AkitchenInUg to share your creations

It is time for us to talk about posho because as much as we try to deny it, it is a huge part of us as Ugandans. If you have passed through the Ugandan educational system, then you have probably had your fair share of posho (and beans) and then some! But to be honest, I have come to love posho so much that I make it on a weekly basis and I am seriously thinking of many other ways we can celebrate this high energy food. An E-Book perhaps?

I realized that sometimes it hard to put some processes into words so I have made a small video to demonstrate the basic procedure of making posho. While doing my research, I also realized that there are many ways to make posho. For example in Kenya, they prefer it a little bit harder than in Uganda while in Southern Africa (Zambia and Zimbabwe), it is preferred a little softer, almost like a thick porridge.

Now with the above in mind here are some observations:

For this video, I used yellow maize flour. Id you have white maize flour, the results will be the same. Yellow flour tastes a little different from white. This is not significant and is only noticeable if you have been eating white flour for quite some time.
Make sure the water has reached boiling point before adding the flour. this will quicken the cooking process.
Mingling vigorously and continuously will ensure that you don’t have lumps in your posho
The mingling duration will range from 15-20 minutes. You can occasionally stop in-between mingling and cover the pan to let the steam inside cook the posho then continue.
Once you are sure the posho is ready ( and doesn’t taste raw and “flourly”), you can cover the pan and reduce the fire completely so that it can cook in its own steam

Now that we have broken down the process, here is the video.

How do you make posho or its equivalent? Let me know below. Also what do you like to eat it with? I personally find it better with protein sauces and soups.