COPPERWhat is the national dish of Tanzania?
Tanzania has no official national dish. The one most often named is chipsi mayai, Swahili for "chips and eggs": French fries cooked in a pan with beaten eggs poured over them until they set into a thick omelette. Born on the streets of Dar es Salaam, it is sold everywhere in the country and served with kachumbari salad or pili-pili hot sauce.
What is chipsi mayai?
Chipsi mayai, also called zege, is a potato and egg omelette in its simplest form. Potatoes are cut into chips and fried in oil until crisp outside and cooked through. Beaten eggs are then poured over the chips in the pan, and the whole thing cooks until the egg holds the chips together in one thick round.
Food stands, indoors and on the street, make it to order. Some cooks mix onion, bell pepper or other vegetables into the eggs before they go in the pan. It is eaten at any hour, and the Culture of Tanzania entry on Wikipedia lists it among the country's breakfast foods, especially in rural areas.
How chipsi mayai is made
The home version published by Haydom-Friends, a charity working with a hospital in northern Tanzania, needs only three things: 10 large potatoes, frying oil and 5 large eggs. That ratio, two potatoes per egg, gives an omelette that is mostly chips.
The potatoes are washed, peeled and cut into wedges, then dried with a towel so they do not spit in the oil. They are fried in hot oil until crisp outside and cooked through inside. The eggs are beaten with a fork and poured over the chips laid in a greased pan.
Just before the egg is completely firm, the whole round is turned and fried on the other side until golden brown. The result is closer to a Spanish tortilla de patatas than to a folded French omelette, and Wikipedia's entry on chipsi mayai points readers to the Spanish dish for comparison.
What is served with chipsi mayai?
Two things almost always come with it:
- Kachumbari: a raw salad of sliced tomato, red onion and chili, with coriander, lemon juice and salt.
- Pili-pili: the Swahili name for hot sauce, whatever the recipe of the stall.
Why there is no single answer
No law or government declaration names a national dish of Tanzania. Chipsi mayai gets the title because it is cheap, fast and found in every region, from the most remote villages to the big towns. Wikipedia describes it as the unofficial national dish, and it is the one given for Tanzania on Wikipedia's list of national dishes.
The other contender is ugali, the stiff maize-flour dough that is the most common staple starch across the African Great Lakes. It is what most Tanzanian households put on the table every day. It is eaten by hand: a lump is rolled into a ball with the right hand, pressed with the thumb to make a hollow, then used to scoop up stew, greens or meat. Leftover ugali is often eaten with tea the next morning.
Tanzanian food also changes along the coast. In Dar es Salaam, Tanga, Bagamoyo, Zanzibar and Pemba, spicy food and coconut milk are common, and Indian cooking has left a deep mark on the whole cuisine.
Nyama choma: the meal for gatherings
If chipsi mayai is the everyday snack, nyama choma is what Tanzanians order when they sit down together. The name means roasted meat in Swahili. Goat on the bone is rubbed with salt and roasted well above glowing embers for about an hour, turned often so it browns without burning.
It is then chopped into bite-size pieces on a board and eaten by hand with kachumbari and ugali. The same dish is a fixture across the border, which is why it is the dish most often named in our article on the national dish of Kenya.
Other dishes to know from Tanzania
Pilau is the rice of celebrations on the Swahili coast. Basmati rice is cooked in beef broth with a pilau masala of cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper. The onions are fried for a full 15 minutes until deep brown, and that is what gives the grains their colour.
Zanzibar mix, or urojo, comes from the street stalls of Stone Town. It is a tangy turmeric potato soup thickened with flour and chickpea flour, sharpened with lemon and tamarind, then loaded by each eater with bhajias, cassava crisps and coconut chutney.
In the west and in the Kilimanjaro region, green highland cooking bananas are a staple too, the same bananas Uganda mashes into matoke, which we cover in our article on the national dish of Uganda.
All three Copper recipes, with ingredients and step-by-step methods, are on our page about the food of Tanzania. For the wider picture, see our guide to East African food.
The recipes
- Nyama choma🇹🇿 Tanzania · 1 hour and 50 minutes
Pilau🇹🇿 Tanzania · 1 hour and 55 minutes
Zanzibar mix🇹🇿 Tanzania · 45 minutes
Questions people ask
Does Tanzania have an official national dish?
No. No law or government statement names one. Chipsi mayai is the dish most often called the unofficial national dish, while ugali is the everyday staple.
What does chipsi mayai mean?
It is Swahili for "chips and eggs". The dish is also known as zege.
Where does chipsi mayai come from?
It was invented on the streets of Dar es Salaam and is now sold in every region of Tanzania.
What is served with chipsi mayai?
It is usually served with kachumbari, a raw tomato, onion and chili salad, or with pili-pili hot sauce.
Is ugali Tanzanian or Kenyan?
Both. Ugali is the most common staple starch across the African Great Lakes region, including Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, and the word itself is Swahili.
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- What is the national dish of Eritrea?
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