Djinn's Food

Having beans for lunch today

3 August 2026 · 2.0K views on YouTube

Ewa — beans — is the plainest serious food in Nigeria. Brown honey beans cooked soft, seasoned with pepper, onion and oil, and eaten with bread, plantain, garri or nothing.

It is treated as humble, and it is: it is cheap, it needs no skill beyond patience, and nobody serves it to impress anyone. But it is also, by a distance, one of the most nutritious things on the street. A plate of beans does more for a person than most of what costs three times as much.

The only real technique is time. Beans that have been rushed stay tough at the middle; beans given the hour they want go creamy on their own without anything being added.

What is in it

  • Brown honey beans
  • Fresh pepper
  • Onion
  • Palm oil
  • Salt and seasoning

How it sits with your body

Beans are roughly a quarter protein by dry weight, which is a great deal for something that costs what it costs. They also carry iron, folate, magnesium and potassium.

What sets them apart is the fibre. Beans release their energy slowly, so a plate at lunch does not leave you hungry and flat by three o'clock the way white rice can.

Eaten with bread or plantain, the grain covers the amino acid beans are short of and the protein becomes complete.

Worth knowing

Filling and slow to digest, which is the point, but heavy for some people at night. The oil is where the calories climb — the beans themselves are almost fat-free.

General information about everyday foods, not medical or dietary advice.

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