Mafé (Groundnut Stew)

Name: Mafé (Groundnut Stew)
Total time: 1 h 40 min
Yield: 5
Cuisine: Senegalese
Ingredients: 800 g Beef or lamb, in large cubes; 200 g Smooth peanut butter, unsweetened; 2 Onions, chopped; 2 tbsp Tomato paste; 2 Tomatoes, chopped; 4 cloves Garlic, minced; 300 g Sweet potato or cassava, chunked; 2 Carrots, chunked; 1/4 Cabbage, in wedges; 1 Scotch bonnet chilli, whole; 3 tbsp Neutral oil; 1 L Water or stock; 2 tsp Salt

Beef or lamb stewed slowly in peanut butter and tomato until the sauce turns thick, red-brown and glossy — West Africa's great comfort stew, poured over rice.

Fuente

Receta de Senegalese home kitchens · 🏺 Tradicional · Everyday Senegalese cooking — the one-pot rice-and-fish table of Dakar and the coast, built on onions, lemon, chilli and groundnuts.

West African · groundnut stew — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article (canonical title 'Peanut stew') confirms maafe / mafé as a groundnut stew of West African origin, associated with the Mandinka and Bambara and eaten widely from Senegal to Mali and beyond, made with meat, tomato and peanut paste. Quantities and method here are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

Ezinne's Kitchen Chef Oleley🧑‍🍳Cooking With Claudy

⏱ 100 min🍽 5 porciones🔥 590 kcal🇸🇳 Senegal🌶️

HalalSin glutenSin lácteos

Pasos

Brown the meat in the oil in batches over high heat, then set it aside. Do not crowd the pot or it steams instead of browning.
Lower the heat, cook the onions until soft, add the garlic and tomato paste and fry for 3 minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes and cook until they break down.
Loosen the peanut butter with a ladle of hot water until it is pourable, then stir it into the pot. Return the meat, add the rest of the water, the whole chilli and the salt.
💡 Never drop peanut butter straight into the pot — it seizes into lumps that will not smooth out.
Simmer uncovered on low for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes so the peanut butter does not catch on the bottom.
Add the sweet potato and carrots and cook 20 minutes, then the cabbage for a final 10. The sauce is ready when a spoon dragged across the pot leaves a track and oil beads on the surface.
Taste for salt, lift out the chilli (or crush it in if you want the heat), and serve over white rice.

💡 Consejos

⚠️ This dish is peanuts, by definition. It cannot be made nut-free — do not serve it to anyone with a peanut allergy, and say so when you bring it to a shared table.
Senegal is one of the world's major groundnut producers, which is why the peanut sits at the centre of the national cooking rather than at its edges.
Versions run across West Africa — maafe, tigadèguèna in Mali, groundnut soup in Ghana and Nigeria. Chicken and vegetarian versions are equally normal.