As I mentioned in an earlier post. it never ceases to amaze me how many recipes in Africa use ground peanuts or peanut butter as an ingredient. Whether as a binding agent or for flavor, it is high likely to appear in more and more recipes I’ll make over the course of this project. In some more developing areas of the continent, it may be harder to come by ingredients that help to thicken stews and sauces. Peanuts, especially harvested peanuts that are then ground into a nut butter, is found to be a common substitute.

I wanted to keep it simple for this recipe and one thing I found in my research, is a reference to a peanut sauce fairly common in the country of Benin. In fact, when I looked for recipes for this tiny country, websites kept leading me back to this sauce. This is a slightly spicy sauce, thanks to the presence of habanero peppers, and is used as a condiment for chicken and/or vegetables, which is house I used it. I found this great on grilled chicken. The recipe makes a fairly large amount and I think it keeps for about a week in the fridge. I used this recipe: https://foreignfork.com/spicy-peanut-sauce/

Overall Level of Effort: 1

Skill Level: Beginner

Would Make It Again? No

Additional Notes: This sauce was great, but if we’re being honest, I still prefer the slightly sweeter peanut satay sauce commonly found in Southeast Asia. Also, and this should go without saying but sometimes I forget, please be careful in working with any kind of hot pepper. They can vary in their potency and I sadly can count on two hands the amount of times I haven’t been as diligent and got a little juice in my eye. Yikes!