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🍽️ Riz au soumara (lafri) et ses variantes

Quantities for 4 people, from the Marché Facile assistant’s recipe sheet. Ingredients link to product pages in the catalogue — the day’s price is on the product page, never frozen here.

Ingredients

Ingredient	Quantity (4 people)	In the catalogue
Rice	800 g	Rizière rice most often sold in 5 kg bags: family size, the rice keeps a long time
Soumara (fermented néré seeds)	4 balls (about 50 g) or 3 tbsp of powder	Soumara × 4 Note: The signature of the dish. The balls are washed, then crushed; the powder is ready to use. Add at the end of cooking to preserve the aroma.
Fresh okra	5	Fresh Baoulé okra Note: Whole in the lafri (they cook with the rice and are served as they are).
White eggplant or small African eggplant	4	White eggplant
Onion	2	White onion
Fresh chili	2	Fresh chili Note: Whole in the lafri pot: they flavour the dish without necessarily making all of it spicy.
Dried shrimp powder	1 tbsp	Dried shrimp powder
Dried fish powder (optional)	1 tbsp	Dried fish powder Note: Very common with shrimp powder; some pots do without it.
Protein for the variations — beef, poultry or smoked fish (optional)	400 g of beef, or 1 bird, or 1 smoked fish (the simple version does without it)	Beef bourguignon shank Note: VARIANTS added to the base, as you like: precooked beef (the rice finishes in its broth); smoked guinea fowl or chicken; flaked smoked fish (magne or smoked capitaine). Plain lafri has none of these proteins, only the powders.
Carrot (meat variation) (optional)	2 (200 g)	Carrot Note: In the beef variant, the diced carrots cook with the rice in the meat broth.
Fresh tomato (tomato variation) (optional)	3	African tomato Note: Tomato variant only: tomato-onion base blended and reduced before cooking the rice, riz gras style.
Tomato paste (tomato variation) (optional)	2 tbsp	Alyssa tomato paste
Oil	5 cl	AYA sunflower oil
Seasoning cube	1 cube	Maggi chicken cube sold in packs of 10 cubes, the smallest size in the catalogue; the rest keeps for your next sauces
Salt	1 tsp	Fine iodized salt
Water	about 1.2 L	Already at home (assumed to be at home)

Preparation

Rice flavoured with fermented néré seeds (soumara, also called soumbala, nététou or afitin). In the simple Ivorian version, lafri, the rice is cooked with okra, aubergines and whole chillies; the crushed soumara and the dried shrimp and dried fish powders join the pot at the end of cooking, over low heat, to keep all their aroma. Named variants: with beef (the meat is pre-cooked first, and the rice finishes in its broth, with carrots); with smoked guinea fowl or chicken; with smoked fish; and the tomato version, where the rice cooks in a reduced tomato-onion base, riz gras style. Only one of the cross-checked sources adds turmeric: it is a personal touch, not the base.

Recipe in English. See all 57 recipes · See the catalogue