COPPERSishwala recipe
A stiff Swazi porridge of maize meal, often cooked together with sugar beans, eaten by hand alongside a meat or vegetable stew.
Ingredients
- 500 g maize meal
- 250 g dried sugar beans
- 1 tsp salt
- 2000 ml water
How to make Sishwala
- Soak 250 g dried sugar beans (speckled, borlotti-type beans) overnight in plenty of cold water, then rinse.
- Cover the beans with fresh water, add ½ tsp salt and simmer 1 to 1.5 hours, until tender.
- Drain them, add about 1 liter of hot water and bring back to a boil.
- Rain in 500 g maize meal a little at a time, stirring hard with a wooden spoon to prevent lumps, and add ½ tsp salt.
- Lower the heat, cover and cook 25 to 30 minutes, stirring and pressing the porridge every few minutes, until it is very thick and pulls away from the sides of the pot.
- Serve hot, heaped on the plate beside a meat or vegetable stew; it is eaten by hand, rolled into small balls to scoop up the stew.
What is Sishwala?
Sishwala is a traditional dish from Eswatini, simmered in one pot, and takes about 14 hours and 10 minutes from start to finish. It is built around maize meal and dried sugar beans. The recipe below uses 4 ingredients and is written out step by step.
How long does Sishwala take?
At 850 minutes it is slower than 88% of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas. Copper's atlas has 4 dishes built on maize meal. The method runs to 6 steps, the longest being 30 minutes.
Any tips for making Sishwala?
Rain the maize meal into the boiling bean water a little at a time, stirring hard, then cook covered, pressing it, until it pulls away from the pot.
How Sishwala compares
Dried sugar beans appears in no other dish in the atlas.
Copper documents Eswatini alongside 197 other countries. Every recipe is free to read, with the full ingredient list and every step.