Do you often crave mouth-watering, tenderly marinated, and slow-grilled meat or chicken? Do you love the flavour of wood-smoked barbecue with smokey hot party Jollof rice? We bet you do!
There is something quite primal about smoking food. The aromatic and pleasant smell of delicious food instantly puts a smile on your face and can trigger thoughts, experiences, and even emotions of hunger. Such smells bring us into a place of anticipation and happiness and connect us to memories of a time when humans only ate fresh from the fire. It is hard to perceive Smokey food and not feel like you should be eating. Sometimes without looking for it, the smell comes evading your space, escaping from a neighbor’s kitchen or from that local bukka driving along the road.
Africans have vibrant smoke and grilled cultures as smoking was a form of food preservation for most parts of the continent. In West Africa, eighty percent of fresh fish undergo a smoking process before consumption. Most of the continent’s staples such as plantain, sweet potato, and yam are roasted as street food and other snacks, to create smoking signature profiles. The continent also has a pervasive meat culture, with barbequed or grilled meat cultures. Whether Braai/Shisa Nyama in South Africa, Suya/Chinginga in West Africa, Mushkaki/Nyama Choma in East Africa, the roasted and grilled meat culture is a pervasive one across the continent. Increasingly, these grilled spices have found their way into other applications. Nigeria’s suya spices – a blend of ginger, roasted peanuts, and hot chilli pepper – have become a popular seasoning for Indomie and pasta meals and smokey Jollof is a delicacy for many Africans within the continent and in the diaspora.
In the presence of a grill, the taste and smell of smoked food reminds us of everything we love about being outside, the outdoor barbecue with family and loved ones, the roadside food vendors who sold ‘suya’ or the much sought-after smokey taste of party Jollof. But you don’t need a grill anymore. You can get the same incredible smell and flavour in your kitchen using the new range of Freddy Hirsch Nigeria authentic smokey and grill seasonings. Having mastered the art and use of flavours and seasonings that exude the rich smokey grill flavour into food, Freddy Hirsh has launched its grill-type flavours, that are designed to recreate the fresh-from-the-grill-without-an-actual-grill taste. The flavours are available in African firewood seasoning, hickory seasoning, camp-fire seasoning, and flame-grilled seasoning. There are several types of wood used in cooking which has an impact on the finished product and specific wood combinations can create a hearty, savoury, and sweet note to African food.
We wish you a delicious, barbeque and Jollof-filled month. Welcome to the eleventh edition of our ‘A Taste of Africa’ newsletter!
Kojo Brifo
Managing Director, Freddy Hirsch Nigeria
The Flavour of the Month
Our flavour for the month is the smokey & grill seasoning, designed to recreate the fresh-from-the-grill-without-an-actual-grill taste, has an impact on the finished product and specific wood combinations can create a hearty, savoury, and sweet note to African food.
Africans have vibrant smoke and grilled cultures as smoking was a form of food preservation for most parts of the continent. In West Africa, eighty percent of fresh fish undergo a smoking process before consumption.
Find out more about our Smokey & Grill seasoning here
Freddy Hirsch Nigeria Spices up West African Foods with new Smokey, Grill Flavour Seasonings
We recently unveiled a range of new, authentic smokey and grill seasonings targeted at the West Africa market.
In this mention by Food Business Africa, we articulate that our launch is in response to Africa’s grilled food culture, rising consumer preference for local smoke and grill food profiles, and demand for enhanced meat, soups, seafood, and snacks flavours.
You can read this here.