Cooking Nigerian Food Without Seasoning Cubes: What I Use Instead

 

Almost all African foods today seem to be made with industrial, MSG-based seasonings.

Scratch that! 

I’m Nigerian, so I’ll stick to the African food I know best, which is Nigerian food.

At a time when more people are taking a closer look at what they eat and conversations around ultra-processed foods are becoming increasingly common, one product almost always enters the discussion: industrial seasonings.

In Nigeria, these seasonings were once simply called Maggi, because Maggi was the dominant brand. Even today, many people use "Maggi" as a generic term for seasoning cubes, regardless of whether the product is actually Maggi, Knorr, Royco, Gino, or one of the many other brands and variants now available. There are cubes, powders, and flavours designed for everything from jollof rice to soups.

For many Nigerians, cooking without these seasonings is almost unthinkable. Some genuinely believe that tasty food cannot be made without them.

I was fortunate to grow up during a period when seasoning cubes were not nearly as widespread. In my part of Igboland, "onye nri Maggi" was once a derogatory term used to describe someone whose food only tasted good when seasoning cubes were added.

As a child, I always looked forward to meals prepared by my maternal grandmother. To me, her food was far tastier than my mother's. It wasn't until much later, after I stopped using seasoning cubes myself, that I understood why. My mother added seasoning cubes to her stews and rice dishes but not her soups, while my grandmother relied more heavily on natural ingredients and cooking techniques to create flavour.

When I started cooking as a teenager, I would sometimes sneak half a seasoning cube into the soups I made, and every single time, my mum detected it. At one point, I became the “onye nri Maggi” title holder in my family. My elder brother still enjoys reminding me just how disastrous a cook I was in those days.

As I write this, I haven’t cooked with industrial seasoning for over eight years. It wasn’t a decision I deliberately set out to make. When we relocated to Norway, I brought some packs of seasoning cubes with me, and when they ran out, I had to learn to cook without them. It took some experimenting and a fair number of bland meals before I worked out which natural seasonings work best in which dishes, and how and when to add them to make a real difference in taste. I soon learnt that flavour is not just about what you add, but when and how you add it.

Even after discovering that I could buy seasoning cubes in Norwegian grocery shops, and after several trips back to Nigeria where I could easily buy the uniquely Nigerian seasoning cubes, I never went back to using them. I had learnt to make tasty meals by building flavour from natural ingredients and by deciding consciously what the flavour maker in each meal would be.

Today, the taste of my stews, rice dishes, pasta dishes, and soups come entirely from natural ingredients, primarily my protein sources. For instance, I have learnt that rosemary, thyme, curry powder, ginger, onions, and fresh peppers not only make meats taste better but also create rich stocks that become the flavour foundation for stews, rice, and pasta dishes. When cooking shrimp, I often sauté it with garlic, butter, and fresh pepper. I've discovered that I prefer dried thyme to fresh thyme, while fresh rosemary gives a better flavour than the dried version. I've learnt that celery leaves add a lovely taste to pasta dishes and lasagna. And when making traditional Nigerian soups, I boil the fish stocks for long, allowing more flavour to be extracted before I even begin making the soup itself.

Perhaps my taste buds have changed over the years. Yet when I visit Nigeria and eat in the homes of family and friends who still cook with seasoning cubes, I honestly do not find their food noticeably tastier than mine.

Nigerian restaurants are a different matter.

Many restaurant meals contain so much seasoning that the flavour often feels exaggerated rather than enhanced that it has become one of the reasons I rarely enjoy eating out in Nigeria.

For me, industrial seasonings are simply one more ultra-processed product that I would rather do without.

Two years ago, I drastically reduced the amount of ultra-processed food consumed in my household. Eliminating seasoning cubes fit naturally into that broader goal.

I like to compare giving up seasoning cubes to giving up sugar in my oats, which I now sweeten with banana and cinnamon instead. It isn’t that sugar is bad for my health, but I found a natural alternative that is better for my health goals. I chop the banana into small pieces so that every spoonful comes with a little banana, and I enjoy the depth of flavour cinnamon adds. With the banana, I also need less oats. I get more flavour, the meal takes longer to digest, which helps with my weight maintenance goals, and I get one more serving of fruit in my day.

Dropping seasoning cubes has worked the same way: I just prefer cooking the good old way.