Akara is a delicious meal made from beans. It can be served as breakfast or dinner. We will take you through simple steps to make delicious akara in your kitchen.
Instructions
- Wash off the back of the beans
- Grind the beans with your blender making sure you add as little water as possible. The water should be just enough to move the blades of the blender. The less water you add at the grinding stage, the more the beans batter will stay together during frying thereby reducing spatter.
- Put some vegetable oil on the cooker to heat up. The oil should be at least 3 inches deep.
- Put some of the ground beans into a mortar. This should be the quantity you can fry in one go.
- Stir the beans puree with the pestle in a continuous circular motion. You need to apply some pressure so that you can energize the particles of the beans puree. Keep stirring till the ground beans appears whiter and you can perceive its peculiar aroma.
- Check to make sure the oil is hot. The oil should be hot enough to sizzle but not too hot. If too hot, the Akara will spatter as soon as the beans batter hits the oil.
- Once the oil is hot, add the onions and pepper to the beans puree and stir well.
- Add salt to your taste and stir again. Salt should always be added just before scooping the beans mixture into the oil. If salt stays in the mixture for extended periods of time, it will destroy the leavening property of the beans. This property is what makes the Akara float in the oil and prevent spatter during frying.
- To fry the Akara, scoop the mixture with a table spoon and slowly pour this into the oil. Dipping the spoon, a little bit into the oil helps reduce spatter.
- Fry the underside till brown and flip to fry the top side too.
- When the Akara balls are brown all over, remove and place in a sieve lined with paper towels.
Ingredients
You need only 5 ingredients to make Akara:
- 1 cup of Beans (black-eyed or brown beans)
- 2 habanero peppers (also chilli peppers)
- 1 medium onion
- Salt to taste
- Vegetable Oil for frying
