If you love good food, you’ve got to try my grandma’s tasty simple beef tallow Luhya mushroom recipe. Go nuts with this rich, nutty flavored dish ripped out of a page from my family’s recipe book.

There’s is a clutch of wild mushrooms that the Luhya used as food. Despite the varied culinary properties of these mushrooms (bubwoba or bwoba), the Luhya traditionally prepared all kinds of mushroom in similar fashion. On the other hand, the cooking also largely consists of a quick saute followed by stewing. Simple as it gets. However, like all simple things the devil – or as in this case the angels that sing hallelujah when discerning taste buds meet heavenly food – is in the details.

All about this traditional family dish: Secrets behind my grandma’s simple beef tallow Luhya mushroom recipe

Ok, this simple beef tallow Luhya mushroom recipe is as traditional as my grandma. She was a fabulous cook who in the fewest of steps, devoid of the hullabaloo of modern cooking, whipped up heaven in a pot. Khukhu went to be with the ancestors just a few years shy of the dawn of the new millennium. She took her bow at well over 100 years of age. Therefore, this makes this bubwoba recipe a century and several decades old.

Grandma would cook a her traditional vegetables using a mixture of beef and mutton tallow. She made the tallow (isiachi), which is rendered fat from beef or mutton, herself. Khukhu would season her food dashingly with table salt; but generously with the traditional salts munyu musherekha or munyu kwa lukhaye.

She maintained five or so bushes of springs onions in her kitchen garden. In sustainable fashion, she would harvest a maximum of two leaves from this crop whenever she need onions for cooking. Which, I must add, happened only in rare occasions such as when she prepared this firm family favorite: beef tallow wild mushrooms.

As for tomatoes, she never saw the need for any. For veggie version of this meal, substitute the tallow and milk with your desired preferences.

Tasty bubwoba: Simple beef tallow Luhya mushroom recipe

Traditional century old Luhya cuisine recipe that uses tallow, munyu musherekha and milk to deliver a creamy, nutty meal of wild mushrooms.

Print Recipe

Course Main Dish

Cuisine African Cuisine, East African Cuisine, Luhya Cuisine

Equipment

1 Sufuria or cooking pot
1 Cooking stick

Ingredients

Seasoning

1 cup Munyu musherekha or ½ teaspoon munyu kwa lukhaye
1 tbsp salt

Main ingredients

4 handfuls dried bubwoba (wild mushrooms)
1 cup Whole Milk
2 tablespoons Beef or mutton tallow (Isiachi)
4 Shoots spring onion

Instructions

Clean the wild mushrooms by soaking them in water for at least 3 hours and letting the soil to fall to the bottom of the container. Thereafter, repeatedly rinse he mushrooms until water is clear.
4 handfuls dried bubwoba (wild mushrooms)
Melt the beef tallow (isiachi) in a pan and fry the mushrooms and stirring continuously to avoid it sticking to the pan.
2 tablespoons Beef or mutton tallow (Isiachi)
Add munyu musherekha and cover to simmer until the munyu reduces.
1 cup Munyu musherekha
Add milk and let simmer until it reduces to desired thickness and mushrooms are soft. Add water as need be if mushrooms remains undercooked.
1 cup Whole Milk
Season with salt
1 tbsp salt
Garnish with the spring onions and serve hot.
4 Shoots spring onion

Notes

Learn more

How to make animal fat tallow (isiachi), the traditional Luhya way

Keyword Creamy Delicacies, Easy, Rich, Traditional

Cook up delicious bwoba with my grandma’s easy beef tallow Luhya mushroom recipe