How to Cook Ugandan Beans (Bijanjaalo) at Home in the UAE

By the Mekazon Kitchen

Ask anyone who grew up in Kampala what Saturday smelled like and the answer is the same: a heavy pot of beans on a low flame, doing nothing in particular for an hour. Learning how to cook Ugandan beans — bijanjaalo — is less about a recipe than about patience and one good fried base. Here is how we cook them at home in the UAE, with the exact packs to buy.

Which beans: nambaale, kawo and what actually works

Uganda does not cook one bean. The everyday workhorse is the small red-brown nambaale, which softens into its own thick, glossy gravy without any help — this is the bean most Ugandan homes mean when they say bijanjaalo. Our Dry Red Beans (Nambaale) 1kg is that bean, and it is the one to start with.

The other pot you will see is kawo — dried green field peas, cooked the same way but finishing looser, greener and a little sweeter. Green Kawo Field Peas 1kg is worth keeping alongside the beans so you can alternate through the week. Both sit in our Uganda · Beans & Legumes shelf.

A note on names: the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is of Central and South American origin and is called French bean, haricot or kidney bean depending on where you are standing, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nambaale is a local selection of that same species — which is why a Ugandan pot and a Kenyan one taste nothing alike.

How to cook Ugandan beans, step by step

1. Soak, properly

Cover 2 cups of dry beans with plenty of cold water and leave them overnight, or at least six hours. Soaked beans cook in roughly half the time, and — more importantly — they cook evenly, so you do not end up with a pot where half are mush and half are still chalky. Drain the soaking water and rinse.

2. Boil them plain

Put the beans in a deep pot with fresh water about three fingers above the beans. Bring to a boil, then drop to a steady simmer and leave them alone for 60–90 minutes, topping up with hot water if the level drops below the beans. Do not add salt or tomato yet. Acid and salt early will keep the skins tough no matter how long you cook.

They are ready when you can crush one flat against the roof of your mouth with no resistance. A pressure cooker gets you there in about 25 minutes.

3. Build the fried base — this is the whole dish

While the beans finish, fry the base in a separate pan: a generous amount of oil, two sliced onions cooked slowly until properly brown (not golden — brown), then a chopped tomato, a little garlic, and half a teaspoon of Tropical Heat Beef Masala. Let it cook down until the oil separates and floats. That separation is the signal.

Tip the base into the bean pot along with a crumbled Royco Mchuzi Mix Beef and now, finally, the salt. Simmer another 15 minutes so it thickens and the colour turns deep red-brown rather than orange.

For the richer version, stir in two heaped spoons of Groundnut Paste (Ebinyebwa) at the end, loosened first with a ladle of the bean liquid so it does not seize. That turns bijanjaalo into the version most people remember from home — and if groundnut sauce is what you are really after, we wrote a full guide to binyebwa separately.

Katogo: the breakfast that made beans famous

Katogo is a traditional Ugandan breakfast dish, and its history is a neat piece of social record: it began as diced cassava mixed with beans, regarded as a poor man's meal, before wealthier households swapped in matooke and later offal and other sauces. It spread from Buganda and Western Uganda to become a standard breakfast across the country.

To make it, you cook the starch in the sauce rather than beside it. Peel and chunk Matooke (green bananas), tip them straight into the simmering beans with a splash more water, cover, and let them steam through for 20 minutes until they take on the colour of the sauce. Fresh cassava root and Ugandan yams (amayuuni) both work the same way — cassava is the original, and it is still our favourite.

What to serve it with

Beans on their own are a side; beans with a starch are dinner. The standard pairing is posho — stiff maize meal — and for that we use NUMA Power Fine Posho Maize Flour 2kg or Maganjo Maize Flour 2kg. If you have not made posho before, our posho vs ugali guide walks through the stirring.

Rice is the easier weeknight answer — Numa Super Rice 1kg — and a handful of Mukene silver fish fried crisp on the side is how a lot of our Dubai customers finish the plate.

FAQ

Why are my beans still hard after two hours?
Two usual causes: salt or tomato went in too early, or the beans are old stock — very old dry beans can refuse to soften at all. A pressure cooker is the fix.

Can I cook Ugandan beans without soaking?
Yes, but budget two to three hours of simmering and expect a less even pot. Soaking overnight is the single easiest improvement you can make.

How long do cooked beans keep?
Three to four days covered in the fridge, and they improve on day two as the sauce tightens. They freeze well in portions — reheat with a splash of water to loosen.

Cook it this week

Everything above is on the shelf now: start with the beans and legumes, add your flour and grains and a seasoning or two, or browse the full Uganda shop. Delivered across the UAE.

By the Mekazon Kitchen — we stock these exact packs and cook from them ourselves.