Peanut (groundnut) chicken
I love the Rivers of London books and all thought it Peter Grant raves about the groundnut chicken dish his mum makes. After a bit of googling I found that groundnuts are another name for peanuts (and fascinatingly in Nigeria “peanuts” are groundnuts dipped in dough and fried). A bit more googling turned up lots of variations of recipe, lots from American food blogs, not a huge number from any African countries (though a few from ex-pats). I took the common features of various recipes.
The only chicken I had in were some excellent wings, so rather than cooking the meat in the sauce I airfried them until crispy and then coated them.
Traditional this is not, but it was bloody delicious. Also, and airfrier/InstantPot double combo!
You will need
- 5 whole chicken wings, jointed
- A medium onion, finely diced
- A thumb sized chunk of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
- 5 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
- A full habanero chilli, finely diced
- A teaspoon of white pepper, ground
- A tin on tomatoes
- A desert spoonful of tomato puree
- 400ml of stock
- 2 tablespoons of peanut butter (I used crunchy)
- A good glug of olive oil
Do
- Soften the onion with olive oil in the InstantPot on sauté (medium) for 5 minutes or so
- Add the ginger and garlic, stir round for a few minutes
- Add the white pepper, chilli and tomato puree, stir round for another few minutes
- If it starts to catch add the tomatoes and stock earlier
- Stir in the peanut butter and reduce the heat
- Let is cookout and thicken for a few minutes. The peanut butter will thicken it a lot, keep an eye on it.
At this point I left the sauce to go cold and thicken, but you could just straight on.
- Airfry the chicken wings for about 20 minutes at 180 until they crisp up (the photo below is not a great indicator, they were much more done than they look)
- Pop the wings in a small pan, ladle over some of the sauce
- Cook for about 2 minutes or until the sauce is starting to bubble, that way the chicken stays crispy.
Result
The chicken is crispy, the sauce is clinging and it’s so so hot. The white pepper flavour really comes though.
