Ground Nut Soup

In 2013, I went to Sierra Leone, West Africa. It was an amazingly humbling trip where I got to see awe-inspiring landscapes and witness how God provides abundantly. It was also an incredibly difficult trip physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It sounds ridiculous but one of the most difficult things for me while I was there was eating rice for almost every meal. Rice has never been my favorite food, and after five weeks of eating rice, I swore I would never touch it again. However, there was one food that we ate there that I remember loving, and every now and then, I crave it like crazy. In Sierra Leone, it is called Ground Nut Soup.

A few weeks ago, I  started craving it, so I started googling. I am a total hypocrite for admitting this, but one of my pet-peeves is when I have to scroll through pages and pages of someone's blog just to get to a recipe. Every time a recipe blog has. "jump straight to recipe" button, I click it. However, I found myself reading about "West African Peanut Soup" on Feel Good Foodie and saw that the writer starts by explaining that she grew up in West Africa. Her credibility immediately skyrocketed for me and THEN I jumped straight to the recipe.

Here's the great thing about this soup, and why I picked to write about it for this blog: it can be made with less than 10 ingredients, all of the ingredients can be stored for long periods of time, and it can also easily be a vegetarian meal if you want. 

After looking at a few recipes and what we had on hand, here is the recipe I used:

1 T. canola oil

2 large onions (finely chopped)

1 T. fresh ginger

3 oz. tomato paste

2 sweet potatoes (peeled and chopped)

6 cups vegetable broth, chicken broth, or water

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cayenne pepper (do less if you don't like things super spicy!)

1 cup peanut butter

8 oz. shredded chicken

You can leave out the chicken and use water or vegetable broth if you want to make this a vegetarian meal. You can also add 1 cup of spinach or kale if you want to add some vegetables to it. I love (ironically) to eat this soup over rice, but that doesn't have to happen either. 

Here is what you do:

1. Heat your oil in a large pot, add onions and ginger and cook them for 5-10 minutes (you want the onions  to be translucent)

2. Mix in the tomato paste

3. Add your sweet potatoes, salt, and cayenne pepper to the pot

4. Pour in your broth or water, stirring it all together. Bring the mixture to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer and let it cook for 20 minutes (Check to make sure the sweet potatoes are cooked)

5. Stir in the peanut butter and add in the chicken or spinach if you want them

6. Pour it over white rice and enjoy!

This is enough to make at least 6 serving and it takes less than an hour to make!