There are rules to what happens in the kitchen. Even something that looks as obvious as obusuma, to cook the perfect ugali, one must respect all knowledge passed down through the years. Here are 11 unbendable rules to cooking the perfect ugali, gleamed from years of Luhya cooking tradition.
My colleague Sade Khalai was adamant that I was best placed to write this article on the rules to cooking the perfect ugali. She reckons that this is a serious matter as many of her brothers out there are suffering through bad ugali. She also reckons that few know ugali as a Luhya man. At first I resisted, but then I challenged myself. A couple of hours and more than five hundred words later, here we go!
Ingredients
- Never add margarine, cooking oil or salt. Ugali that cooks through well has a delightful taste that’s somewhere between well salted popcorn; a hint of the sweetness of perfectly roasted maize and the heartiness that anyone who enjoys corn whiskeys knows to well. Please don’t kill that with margarine or whichever additives.
- If you can, please use flour from the posho mill. In addition, make the flour as wholesome as you can. This means that you shouldn’t remove the husks. Mill the flour as it is.
- Kindly no milk use only water. Save your milk for making uji to wean babies.
Cooking the perfect ugali: Things to keep in mind during the actual cook
- Ensure that there are no lumps in your ugali. Lumps in your busuma is a product of: the water being insufficiently boiled water, poor skill when reusing leftover ugali or not enough commitment and panache when mixing the ugali when cooking as it firms up.
- The secret to cooking the perfect ugali is all in mastering your flour. The flour is everything: were the husks removed before milling? What are the known characteristics of the flour milled from a particular seed of maize – is it tasty, does it bind to water well? If using flour mixtures to make brown ugali, it is important to know what’s in the flour. For example, cassava completely changes the game. Knowing your flour is central to a key marker of perfect ugali: the consistency of the end product. Remember, soft well cooked ugali is preferred over rock hard obusuma.
- Cook at least one and a half times the size you think is enough. It distresses us Luhyas when we have to eat like we are tiptoeing. Better to have a huge ugali leftover because you can always kinura the leftover ugali. For us, better the stress of more ugali than we need than too little ugali that we have to pace ourselves.
- Cook the ugali through. As it firms up, leave it on the fire to cook through. Keep turning it periodically as one would do to a steak. Keep going until air that is thick from the aroma of cooking ugali wafts into the sitting room and gets the digestive juices of your guests going.
On re-purposing leftover ugali
- If you are going to reuse left over ugali, ensure you know how to kukinura properly. Some fast rules on khukinura: never reuse leftover ugali that has developed an odor; always shave the hard outer bits and dispose them (by feeding to chicken or otherwise); finally, ensure that the leftover busuma has been stirred in well into the boiling water before adding unga to ‘cook; the new ugali.
3 keys to presentation and serving when cooking the perfect ugali
- Always serve the ugali steaming hot. Cold or lukewarm is a no-no.
- Always serve enough soup or vegetables to ‘escort’ your busuma. We don’t take it lightly when we have to khayaga as the Maragoli say: when there’s too much busuma and not enough vegetables or soup.
- Kindly, the proceeding point does not mean that you serve us ugali that’s swimming in soup,
Read: Khukabula busuma and other ugali secrets: How to properly serve obusuma