Ugali

Bring the water to a rolling boil in a heavy pot with a wide mouth. Add the salt if you are using it.

Take about a quarter of the flour and rain it into the water while stirring hard with a wooden spoon. Let this loose porridge bubble for 2 minutes — it cooks out the raw flour taste before the ugali gets too stiff to stir.

💡 Adding all the flour at once is the classic beginner mistake — it seizes into lumps you can never stir out.

Turn the heat to medium-low and add the rest of the flour in three or four handfuls, pressing and folding with the spoon after each one. The mass will get heavy fast — brace the pot with your other hand.

Keep pressing the ugali against the side of the pot and folding it back for 8–10 minutes, until it pulls away from the sides in one clean mass and no longer tastes floury.

💡 The texture you want is firm enough to hold a thumbprint — soft enough to tear, never runny. Kenyans judge a cook by exactly this.

Wet a bowl, tip the ugali in, swirl it into a smooth dome and turn it out onto a plate. Serve hot, in the middle of the table, for everyone to break pieces from.