Ibiharage

Burundi's fried beans: red beans boiled soft, then finished hard in oil with onion and chilli until the skins blister and the pot turns glossy

Origin: Bujumbura & Burundi

From the journey of Beans.

Ibiharage is fried beans, and in a country that eats more of them per head than almost anywhere on earth it is the dish most often named as national. Burundi and Rwanda between them consume something in the region of fifty to sixty kilogrammes of beans per person per year, several times the world average, and the bean is not a side dish there but the principal source of protein for most households. The technique is what lifts it above a bean stew. The beans are boiled until entirely soft and then drained, and only afterwards are they fried hard in oil with onion, garlic, and chilli, so that some skins blister and split whilst others hold. That second cooking is the whole dish: it drives off the remaining water, concentrates the flavour, and gives a texture that a bean simmered from raw in the same pot never achieves. The beans of the Great Lakes are climbing varieties rather than bush ones, staked against maize or trained up poles, and they yield two or three times as much from the same ground. On holdings often measured in fractions of a hectare that difference decides whether a family eats, and it is the reason the region's consumption is what it is. Dozens of named landraces are grown, sorted by colour and cooking time, and a market will sell them as distinct products rather than as beans. It is eaten with rice, with ugali, or with boiled plantain, and it appears at both everyday meals and celebrations. Rwanda cooks the same dish under the same name, the two countries sharing a language, a staple, and a border drawn by Belgium.

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 500 g dried red kidney beans, soaked overnight
  • 6 tbsp palm oil or neutral oil
  • 3 onions, finely sliced
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 green chillies, chopped
  • 1 green pepper, chopped
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste

To finish

  • 1 small bunch coriander, chopped

Method

  1. Drain the soaked beans, cover generously with fresh water, and boil hard for ten minutes. Kidney beans must have that vigorous boil; it is not optional.
  2. Lower to a simmer and cook for fifty minutes to an hour, until completely tender and yielding under a thumb. Do not salt until they are soft, or the skins toughen.
  3. Drain them thoroughly and let them steam dry for a few minutes. Wet beans will not fry; they will stew.
  4. Heat the oil in a wide heavy pan and fry the onions over a medium heat until soft and deep gold, about twelve minutes.
  5. Add the garlic, chillies, and green pepper and cook for three minutes, then the tomatoes, and cook down for eight minutes until thick.
  6. Tip in the drained beans and the salt. Now raise the heat and fry, turning them over rather than stirring hard, for a full ten to twelve minutes.
  7. Let them sit undisturbed for a minute at a time between turns so they catch a little. Some skins will blister and split and the pot will turn glossy as the oil coats everything. This is the point of the dish and the stage most often cut short.
  8. Taste for salt, scatter over the coriander, and serve with rice, ugali, or boiled plantain.

Notes

Two rules with kidney beans: boil hard for ten minutes to destroy the lectins, and do not salt until soft. Drying the beans after draining is what allows them to fry rather than steam, and it takes two minutes. Palm oil is common in the region and gives the colour Burundians expect, though any oil works. Leftovers are better the next day and are usually fried again briefly.

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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