Must try in Senegal

Mafé.

Name: Mafé (Senegalese Peanut Butter Stew)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 1 h 40 min
Total time: 2 h 5 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Senegal
Ingredients: 1 kg beef chuck or shin, in 4 cm cubes; 3 tbsp groundnut oil; 2 large onions, finely chopped; 4 cloves garlic, crushed; 15 g fresh ginger, grated; 4 tbsp tomato paste; 2 ripe tomatoes, chopped; 1.2 l beef stock or water; 2 bay leaves; 1 scotch bonnet, left whole; 250 g unsweetened groundnut paste or natural peanut butter; 400 g cassava, peeled and cut into 4 cm chunks; 350 g sweet potato, in thick chunks; 3 carrots, in thick diagonal slices; 300 g white cabbage, in wedges through the core; to taste salt and black pepper

Senegalese Peanut Butter Stew

Maafe · say it: mah-FAY

Mafé is a groundnut stew, and the groundnut is doing something quite different here from what peanut butter does in a satay sauce. Whisked into tomato-heavy broth and cooked for well over an hour, it stops tasting like peanuts and becomes a thick, brick-coloured gravy that is savoury first, faintly sweet second, with the roasted note sitting underneath everything. Beef or lamb goes soft in it, cassava and sweet potato absorb it, and the finished pot is ladled over white rice in quantities that surprise people the first time. The doneness signal is unmistakable: orange oil separating and pooling on the surface.

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Senegalese Peanut Butter Stew

Gate: SenegalSine-Saloum
Prep: 25 min
Cook: 1 hr 40 min
Total time: 2 hr 5 min
Serves: 6
Status: Medium
Nutrition / serving · estimated: Calories 690 kcal; Protein 40 g; Carbs 45 g; Fat 38 g; Fiber 8 g; Sugar 11 g; Sodium 760 mg

Why this recipe works.

Loosens the groundnut paste with hot broth before it goes near the pot, so it never seizes into lumps.
Cooks long enough for the oil to break out, the signal Senegalese cooks actually use to call a mafé done.
Times the root vegetables separately so the cassava is tender and the sweet potato has not disintegrated.
Tells you exactly which peanut butter works and which one ruins the sauce.

Tips from our kitchen.

Buy unsweetened, unsalted natural peanut butter with nothing on the label but peanuts, or find true groundnut paste at an African grocer. Sugar in the jar is the most common cause of a sickly mafé.
Brown the meat properly in batches. Crowding the pan steams the beef grey, and mafé has no other source of roasted depth beyond the groundnut itself.
Whisk the paste into a ladleful of hot broth in a separate bowl until it is smooth and pourable, then stir that back in. Spooning it straight into the pot gives you lumps you will never fully break up.
Keep the heat low once the paste is in and stir the bottom every 10 minutes — groundnut sauce scorches faster than any tomato sauce and the burnt taste cannot be rescued.
When a slick of orange oil rises to the surface and the sauce coats the back of a spoon, it is done. Skim some of the oil off if you like, but leave a little; it carries the flavour.
If the sauce tightens too much before the meat is tender, loosen it with hot water rather than cold, which shocks the emulsion and can make it grainy.

Substitutions.

Groundnut paste → 250 g natural unsweetened peanut butter, smooth or crunchy: Crunchy works fine and adds a little texture. Stir the jar thoroughly before measuring if the oil has separated on the shelf.
Beef chuck → Lamb shoulder, mutton, or bone-in chicken thighs: Lamb is the most common alternative in Senegal. Chicken needs only 35 minutes of simmering rather than 75, so add the vegetables much earlier.
Cassava → Waxy potato or yam, cut the same size: Cassava has a denser, slightly waxy bite that potato does not reproduce, but the stew still works. Frozen cassava chunks are widely sold and are perfectly good here.

Variations.

Mafé tiga with lamb: Lamb shoulder on the bone instead of beef, which gives a fattier, more perfumed sauce and needs slightly less added oil at the start.
Vegetarian mafé: Skip the meat and build the pot on cassava, sweet potato, carrot, cabbage and chickpeas, using vegetable stock. Add a spoon of tomato paste extra to make up the missing depth.
Mafé with okra: Whole okra pods dropped in for the last 10 minutes, common in the south. They thicken the sauce slightly and add a green, grassy edge.

Storage & reheating.

Mafé keeps 4 days refrigerated and is better on day two, once the groundnut and tomato have settled into each other. The sauce sets solid when cold — reheat gently with a splash of hot water, stirring until it flows again. It freezes for 3 months, though the cassava can turn slightly grainy on thawing, so some cooks freeze the sauce and meat only and cook fresh vegetables into it on reheating.

Serve with

White rice, or fonio if you can find it, with a bowl of the sauce poured over rather than served beside.

The story behind Mafé.

The dish is Mandinka in origin, from the interior belt that spans Mali, Guinea and eastern Senegal, where it is known as tigadegena — literally groundnut sauce. It travelled with traders and with the groundnut itself, which is not native to Africa at all but arrived from South America through Portuguese trade and then took over enormous stretches of Sahelian farmland. By the colonial period Senegal was so committed to the crop that historians describe an entire groundnut economy around Kaolack and the Sine-Saloum, with the paste becoming a pantry staple in every household along the way.

That history explains why mafé now exists in dozens of national versions with real differences between them. Malian tigadegena tends to be looser and more sharply tomato-forward. Ivorian and Guinean versions push more chilli. Senegalese mafé is usually the thickest and the most vegetable-heavy, with cassava, sweet potato, carrot and often a wedge of cabbage cooked right in the sauce until they are soft enough to break with a spoon. Gambian cooks make a near-identical pot and would tell you theirs came first.

The groundnut paste sold in West African markets is unsweetened, unsalted and coarse — literally roasted peanuts ground to a paste and nothing else. Supermarket peanut butter can stand in, but the sweetened, emulsified kind will make the stew cloying and can stop the oil from breaking out properly, which matters because that separation is how Senegalese cooks judge whether a mafé is finished. A pot that has not released its oil is a pot that has not cooked long enough.

Questions, answered.

Can I use ordinary supermarket peanut butter?

Yes, provided it is the natural kind whose ingredients list is peanuts and perhaps salt. Sweetened, hydrogenated peanut butter makes the stew taste like dessert and its added emulsifiers interfere with the oil separating, which is how you judge doneness. Check the label rather than the brand.

Why is my mafé bitter?

Usually scorching. Groundnut paste sinks to the bottom of the pot and catches quickly, so once it goes in the heat must stay low and the base needs scraping every 10 minutes with a flat wooden spoon. Undercooked tomato paste can also read as bitter, so fry it until it darkens before adding liquid.

How thick should the sauce be?

Thick enough to coat a spoon and hold a channel when you draw a spoon across the bottom of the pot, but still pourable over rice. If it is closer to porridge, thin it with hot water; if it stays watery after the vegetables are done, simmer uncovered until it tightens.

Is mafé safe for someone with a peanut allergy?

No, and there is no way to adapt it — groundnut paste is the entire basis of the sauce. Cooks sometimes suggest sunflower seed butter or tahini as a substitute, which produces an edible stew but not mafé. If you are cooking for a peanut allergy, choose yassa or a tomato-based ceeb instead.

Can I make mafé in a pressure cooker?

You can cook the meat under pressure for about 25 minutes with the tomato base and broth, then release, stir in the loosened groundnut paste and simmer uncovered with the vegetables. Do not pressure-cook the groundnut paste itself — it thickens fast, sits on the base and scorches where you cannot see it.

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