Fufu (Swallows) Recipe (2024)

I’d love to see a video with the recipe writer taking us through each step.

White bread is also “notable neutral” and low in nutrients. Taste is cultural and personal. Thanks for the recipe. Agree with other comments that a video would be really helpful to understand the technique.

In Haiti I had this. It’s known there as tomtom, I think. It is, as the recipe says “notably neutral.” A Haitian friend told me that the dough balls are meant to add substance to your soup, which when I had it in Haiti was calaloo. The soup was delicious but the tomtom were very strange to me. My friend had the soup every Sunday when he visited with his mother. He showed me how to have a swallow of the dough with every spoonful of soup. It was good to try.

Cassava and other tubers also contain vitamin C, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin.

Hi all: there is a great video on NYT Instagram now!

Some of us who have spent time in Ghana and other parts of West Africa really enjoy fufu with groundnut stew. Try it. Fufu made directly from cassava is better, but it is a lot of work and this recipe produces a reasonable alternative with significantly less effort.

I love all forms of swallow as it's easy to digest and is gluten free. I sometimes add various herbs to mine or dried chilli flakes or herbal salt with lot's of cracked green pepper. I jazz it up.

I had fufu with the father and another guest in the family home of a ten-year-old boy I tutored. I live in Berlin where I taught English and art for twenty-two years, and the family was from the Ghanian Embassy. They gave me a spoon, but they always eat it with their fingers, as I had observed more than once. The mother prepared the spicy and delicious accompaniment of beef and fish. The fufu was cassava, and bland, but a perfect textural background for the spicy sauce. I would eat it again!

I spent three years in Ghana in my youth. I agree that there’s no substitute for the real thing, but real fufu with a good soup is wonderful. (The quality of the soup is essential, and for me, so was plantain in the fufu.) I had malaria several times, and fufu was one of the things I could eat during a bout (the other was mangos), possibly because all that pounding breaks down the fibers so the starch is easy to digest. If I ever go back to Ghana, it will be in part so I can get good fufu.

As is pasta, and white rice, and peeled potatoes, and . . . .

Ate this many times in Tanzania years ago. Served steamy hot. Eaten with right hand; pinch to from a bite-size ball, make a dent in it and dip into stew or soup. Delish. However, kids laughed as I frequently burned my (Canadian) finger tips. Their fingers were accustomed to the heat, no problem. Casava was a revered plant: roots and (double-boiled) leaves were food, stems were fire fuel, and fronds were waved during celebrations (such as birth of a child).

A truly coveted tuber - the igname- graced the roof carriers of many a Peugot 404 taxi headed south along the main road of Togo. Boiled and pounded to a lump-free mass, this fufu was the haute cuisine of the country. The dipping sauces varied by region: the favorite In the Plateau region was Sauce Arachide. Red palm oil, mashed peanuts, and pumpkin seed paste, beef and if one was truly lucky- fried Fulani cheese cubes. Divine. (fresh ignames ARE available here in the US!)

Looks yummy

In the West Indies we make dumplings from regular wheat flour and use in a similar manner i.e. they are added to soups, curries and stews.

I've never heard the term "swallows" for this, although I've eaten it as nshima and ugali. It's perhaps an acquired taste, due to the blandness and slight bitter quality, but I love it. With the right accompaniments, of course.

Variations of this are made all over Africa, and the consistency is different for every person who makes it. I never liked it. It’s got such a bland pasty taste that the only way to eat it is with a spicy stew of some kind. One way add a little flavor is to add some ground corn meal to the pot — about half as much cassava flour and extra water so it doesn’t become too hard. There’s no precise amount, just eyeball it. Then it’s called luku instead of fufu.

Mine, the consistency of mashed potatoes, wouldn’t turn into balls.

I ate this sometimes when I was living in Nigeria, where they called it 'cassava fufu'. "Sometimes" is the right word, because if I ate it for lunch, my brain stopped working all afternoon. It's a heavy meal and might send you to sleep.

When I was in college, the West Africans I knew all made a fu fu of sorts using a stiff mixture of instant mashed potatoes, with an added tablespoon or two of potato starch. They would beat it in the pan by hand for as long as it took to get the glutenous quality of the real thing. I only had the real thing once. It was definitely nicer, but the potato version wasn’t bad with a spicy African soup.

Instant fufu, ftw. Add boiling water, stir for 5 minutes. Not the real thing, but not bad. It’s neutral. Can’t go far wrong.

Hi all: there is a great video on NYT Instagram now!

When I visited Nigeria several times, my Nigerian friends always called it pounded yam. It was usually white and so delicious with pepper soup!

A person with Celiac disease could eat this. Although I have it, I don't think I would want to...

A truly coveted tuber - the igname- graced the roof carriers of many a Peugot 404 taxi headed south along the main road of Togo. Boiled and pounded to a lump-free mass, this fufu was the haute cuisine of the country. The dipping sauces varied by region: the favorite In the Plateau region was Sauce Arachide. Red palm oil, mashed peanuts, and pumpkin seed paste, beef and if one was truly lucky- fried Fulani cheese cubes. Divine. (fresh ignames ARE available here in the US!)

Ate this many times in Tanzania years ago. Served steamy hot. Eaten with right hand; pinch to from a bite-size ball, make a dent in it and dip into stew or soup. Delish. However, kids laughed as I frequently burned my (Canadian) finger tips. Their fingers were accustomed to the heat, no problem. Casava was a revered plant: roots and (double-boiled) leaves were food, stems were fire fuel, and fronds were waved during celebrations (such as birth of a child).

Yummy, my favorite combo with ochra soup @Max Alexanderpinky promise, ONE CAN ACQUIRE taste for fufu :)

Oh. thank God! I thought you were cooking those cute little birds.

There is a somewhat similar food from the South Indian state of Karnataka made with Ragi (finger millets). The balls are sticky and tasteless but quite enjoyable when eaten with hot saaru(soup) and a hint of ghee. It is a breakfast staple of those heading out for a long day of hard labor, being cheap, easily available and a source of nutrition and energy.

I spent three years in Ghana in my youth. I agree that there’s no substitute for the real thing, but real fufu with a good soup is wonderful. (The quality of the soup is essential, and for me, so was plantain in the fufu.) I had malaria several times, and fufu was one of the things I could eat during a bout (the other was mangos), possibly because all that pounding breaks down the fibers so the starch is easy to digest. If I ever go back to Ghana, it will be in part so I can get good fufu.