Culinary culture in Africa: Its global influence

Already drooling?, wait, there's more, Bambara is Central Africa's most popular delicacy, porridge blended in the most palatable flavors like peanut butter, sugar and rive.

Beef and chicken as staple food are a good source of quality protein. Fish, when it’s possible to catch, adds another delicate option. In Southern Africa, people commonly consume leafy vegetables, seafood and herded animals. In Western Africa, many famous are a combination of fish and meat cooked in sauce prepared with hot pepper, onion, tomato and a variety of spices.

Less conventional in foreign eyes, natives in Eastern Africa consume milk and cattle blood on some special occasions.

But in areas where farming livestock isn’t always plausible due to unfavorable natural and economic environment, bush meat still serves as a substitute. Crocodiles, monkey and antelopes are still roasted and eaten with rice in certain parts of the continent. Fruit bats are another delicacy.

However, the risks associated with eating wildlife meat is more obvious than the deaths due to hunting. Evidence is piling up to suggest that some of the deadly diseases like Ebola could be transmitted to humans while processing bushmeat.

Beyond Africa: Ingredients that influence the world

Along the ancient trade routes, inland or maritime, African culinary traditions were gradually introduced to the rest of the world. However, the progress wasn’t always peaceful. Many ingredients that were later adopted into European, Asian and American food cultures traversed to the foreign land via violent and bloody route.

Coffee plant isn’t exclusively native to Africa. But the credit of discovering coffee beans' cheerful effect is often given to the Ethiopian travelers dating back even before the dawn of the first millennium. Instead of being crushed into a powder to make beverage, coffee beans were first chewed with butter and animal fat as a sort of stimulant for a long journey.