Oil-free Nigerian Tomato Stew

Oil-free Salt-free Nigerian Tomato Stew

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Ingredients

• Approximately 20-25 tomatoes
• 1 container of cherry tomatoes
• 1 sweet onion
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1 tbsp African or Caribbean Thyme
• 1 tbsp crushed red pepper
• 1 vegetable stock (optional)
• Vegetable broth (optional)

Before you start

1. Chop all the tomatoes in half, chop up the onion into large chunks and remove the seeds from the red bell peppers. This does not have to be perfect as we are going to throw it all in the blender.
2. In your blender (preferably high speed) throw in your chopped tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, chopped onion, bell pepper, thyme, and crushed pepper.
3. Blend till all the ingredients have a nice a smooth consistency. This is all going to get boiled down together so if you need to, you can add water to your blender to get it moving but by doing this it will increase your wait time on the boiling process.

Directions

1. Once all the ingredients are blended nice and smooth together throw it into a large pot set at a medium temperature and forget about it on the stove for about 2 hours or until all the water is boiled out of the sauce completely.
2. At this point if you need to transfer it into a smaller pot for easier handling you can.
3. If you opted in for the vegetable stock add that in at this point breaking it up and distributing it into the stew evenly.
4. Turn the heat down to a low temperature add in your desired amount of vegetable broth till you get the consistency you desire. I prefer mine thicker so when I freeze it I can later thin it out or leave it thick depending on the dishes I serve it with.
5. Allow this to simmer on the stove till the stock it well mixed in, approximately 10 min.

Serve the Tomato Stew with your favorite kind of rice and some baked plantain, pounded yam or eba with some spinach or use it as a spaghetti sauce with some other veggies added to it like mushrooms and spinach. One of my personal favorite ways to serve it is to use it to top off a sweet pepper salad with some sauteed onion and tofu.

This simple stew can be used in so many different ways to make several different dishes that you will never get tired of. Making a large pot like this allows for some to be frozen for later usage when in a time crunch.
Enjoy!