10 Utensils Common In Cooking Food In Africa

Number of obvious utensils in food preparation and in cooking are usually unique to Africa. Here are a few!

1. Cooking Pot

In modern Africa, many families have switched to working with cooking utensils made of metallic, ceramic and other materials, specifically when using modern cooking fires such as electric or gas that will fire. However, the traditional earthenware cooking pot still remains a favourite for the majority of.

The traditional cooking pot is associated with clay, as well as fired within a kiln. The processes connected to producing a cooking pot and a water pot are different, since a water pot only has to keep water cool and not withstand the hearth.

The traditional cooking pot is often used over an open fire, pertaining to instance a wood fire, or at a hearth, or over a charcoal burner. The earthy scent of the cooking pot lends a unique flavour on the food. Fresh beans or meat simmered in a pot have quite augment flavour to when cooked in a metallic saucepan.

The insulatory qualities in the clay pot also individuals the cooking process, which further raises the flavour of the food.

2. Mortar and Pestle

A mortar and pestle used being standard equipment in many African households, and often still perhaps may be. A mortar and pestle were used when pounding grain such as millet or sorghum to find the chaff from the grain.

In western Africa, cooked yam or cocoyam one more pounded into foo-foo. In Uganda, roasted groundnuts are pounded into odii paste, while raw groundnuts are pounded into ebinyewa groundnut powder.

The Africa mortar and pestle are large for heavy duty pounding, differing from their counterpart common in western cooking, which is a small utensil for gently rubbing spices.

3. Mingling Stick

Most African kitchens have a mingling stick, or indeed a whole collection specialists. They are associated with wood, and come in all sizes and a lot of other shapes. The most common may be the wooden mingling stick using a flat head, used to stir food, but typically to mingle posho, ugali or kuon - maize meal or millet meal bread.

Every woman has a favorite mingling stick, which she claims produces the best results!

4. Gourd

In many communities, a gourd is often a special and very handy utensil. A gourd is a climbing plant, which creates a long or round watermelon. When this fruit matures and dries, it constitutes a very useful container. A ripe gourd is often brown or golden in colour. The woody inside is then hollowed out and cleansed.

The Kalenjin of western Kenya use their gourds to ferment milk through. And of course, each woman has her favourite gourd.

When a gourd is cut lengthwise into two, one then has two calabashes, usually are very put to use for serving drinks. The clean, woody aroma of drinking water in a calabash incredibly unique. In northern Uganda,visitors were often served homemade beer in calabashes.

Several ethnic communities in Africa just use calabashes as musical instruments, including the Acoli of northern Uganda and communities in western Africa, for in Mali.

6. Winnowing Tray

A winnowing tray - or several - in order to a treasured utensil in many African homes. A winnowing tray is woven out of reeds, and is useful for sorting brown rice. After pounding or threshing, maize, millet, sorghum, rice, simsim and groundnuts are then winnowed in a tray to discover the grain from the chaff.

In some communities, special reed trays are also used to provide food for festive reasons.

7. Grinding Stone

In many communities, a grinding stone was the centre piece in your kitchen. Some homesteads had been grinding hut or house, where various grinding stones of various sizes were housed, for grinding millet, sorghum, or odii. Grinding stones have gradually been replaced by mills.

8. Knives

Like any kind of other cuisine, knives tend to be crucial in African food preparation too. However, traditional knives differed from modern kinds. In Uganda for example, a short, double-edged knife was popular for peeling matoke - cooking banana - supper . scaling fish or skinning slaughtered dogs and cats.

9. Sieve

Every cuisine in earth uses sieves. Sieves in Africa are now mostly made of metal or plastic. Traditionally, they were woven through soft reeds. They were put to use to sieve flour, or beer, before serving that will.

10. Shards

In many homes, shards from broken pots and broken calabashes were valued utensils. Planet Acoli culture for example, calabash shards were treasured for smoothing out millet bread before serving. Apparently, nothing did quite as well as a part broken calabash. And of course, all women had her favourite shards!

Winnowing trays, mingling sticks, gourds, sieves, calabashes and cooking pots were while still often are included in the gifts a newer bride receives to set up her homeowner.

As new foods, and new ways of food preparation establish themselves on the continent, new utensils will also replace aged ones. Indeed, the new labour-saving devices are welcome anywhere.

However, one cannot always quite deny the charm of there are plenty African cooking utensils.

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