See seven healthy ways to make beans the Nigerian way

Ground Beans Made Into Akara Balls: Beans grounded into powder, or wet and washed until the skin falls away and ground wet, adding water as appropriate, is fried in a pan of groundnut oil and served as Akara balls.

Beans Cooked With Vegetable:

This is a personal favourite of mine. Add vegetable (green) to beans dish, five minutes to shutting off the gas cooker, allow vegetable to steam, turn and serve. It brings a whole different flavour and scent to an ordinary dish.

Beans and Abacha:

This may seem like a weird dish but for south-easterners of Enugu extract, Udi to be precise it’s nothing unusual. Simply boil beans till its cooked (don’t add oil). Then, mix and mash with wet Abacha, adding pepper, red oil, maggi and/or salt, even crayfish as appropriate. It is ready to serve.

Beans and Rice:

This needs no introduction, beans and rice dish can be achieved in many ways – add white-cooked beans to plate of jellof; cook beans with rice in jellof format. You can also add white-cooked beans to a white rice and stew dish to serve as a source of protein.

Beans and Indomie: Okay, this seemed to be a family-specific dish. Dad came up with the suggestion of adding cooked indomie to a beans dish since the whole family (till date, minus yours truly) hate a beans-only dish. It is a win-win, you get to add protein food sauce to a junk dish.

Beans and Bread:

Yep, this is more of a street food. The get the best out of this dish, add two spoons of cooked beans in the middle of a slice of bread (like a sandwich), close and munch on it. Three to four slices of beans and bread makes for a healthy lunch or breakfast.

Beans and Plantain:

Could there be a sweeter dish that doesn’t need extra or artificial seasoning? Plantain offers the natural sweetness in a dish that you can heighten with a little salt/ two cubes of maggi star, or less than a Knorr cube.