All I have today, are childhood memories of those super cold mornings. You know, those ones after a heavy night-time downpour, when a delicious breakfast of hot Akara/Custard would follow through.
Did I hear someone say “goodness, yes I remember, but unfortunately I am no good at it”
Your story is about to change darling, I failed shamelessly at making Akara in the past till I discovered my fail proof recipe
Here we go, Let’s commence with the Ingredient list
Ingredients
- Beans (use either the honey brown beans or black eyed beans)
- Habenero pepper (Ata rodo)
- Onions
- Red bell pepper(optional)
- Salt to taste
- Maggi; bouillion cubes (optional)
- Vegetable oil for frying
Instructions/tips
1. First things first, we need to get the beans coat out. This used to be a tedious process before technology blessed us with blenders. All you need to do is put the clean/picked beans in the blender, and then a lot of water in a 4:1 ratio (let the water cover and overshadow the beans completely)
Pulse for a few seconds, take it out of the blender and separate the floating shaft from the beans.
Disclaimer: some folks swear that there is no need to peel your beans from its coat, and that using the whole beans gives the same result🌝 I haven’t tried that yet, I am still stuck in the disbelief zone.
2. Blend your peeled beans with the bearest minimum water required to aid the blades of your blender. You could pre soak the peeled beans for an hour or two to soften the beans and ease the stress off your blenders..
NB* putting too much water in the batter could make the akara a huge flop and cause it to crumble in hot oil. Your batter needs to be thick in consistency.
3. So here is another tricky part, you could decide to blend in your onions, habenero peppers and red bell pepper at this point or you could slice them into the batter later on before frying. It’s more of a preference thing. Please take into consideration however, that blending onions into the batter would introduce more water into it so reduce the initial add on water.
4. Now that your peeled beans is now in batter form, take it out of the blender. It doesn’t have to be blended super smooth but smooth enough to come together into a paste form.
5. Beat the batter for a few minutes with either a wooden spoon or a food mixer to incorporate air into it, this would ensure that you have the fluffiest and most juicy akara. Omiting this particular step could lead to catastrophic results, and make your akara flat, trust me! I have been there before.
6. At this point, add your salt/bouillon cube to taste, but remember very little goes a long way when making akara. Be extra careful!
Add in your sliced onions, habenero pepper and bell peppers if they weren’t initially blended into the batter.
7. You are all set to fry! Make sure the oil covers at least 2/3 of the pan. The oil shouldn’t be too hot to avoid a burnt outer coating and an undercooked inner.It should however be hot enough to sizzle and cook the inside properly.
8. Scoop portions of the batter with your desired spoon size into the oil ( I usually use my regular spoon for meals coz I like my akara small)
9. Flip each side till golden brown
10. Place akara on kitchen towels to drain excess oil and serve with either pap, custard or bread😋
Highlight Recall on making fail proof akara
1. Add very little water to the batter! Use just as much as is required to move the blender blades. Please don’t let the devil tempt you to into overloading your batter with water
2. Easy on the seasoning dear, less is truly more with Akara!
3. Make sure you incorporate air into the batter before frying either manually(wooden spoon) or with a machine (food mixer). We dont want this to end in tears do we?😏
4. Fry in oil, just hot enough to sizzle and cook batter thoroughly without burning.
5. Cooking Oil should cover at least 2/3 of pan and the akara should float when placed in the oil.
So there you have it, try it out and let me know when you become an akara conqueror like me, CIAO
