Disclosure: This Liberian Potato Greens Recipe post is inspired and sponsored by Minute® Ready to Serve. As usual, all opinions are my own.
As many of you know, my family comes from Liberia, West Africa and we love to enjoy traditional African dishes. Most West African recipes consist of some sort of sauce or stew and are served with rice. As much as I love eating West African food, the challenge in cooking many of these dishes is usually the amount of time it takes. A traditional recipe could take several hours to prepare to perfection; not to mention prep time. Preparing some of these dishes with various Minute® Ready to Serve varieties has helped us to enjoy them in less time.
A while back, I shared a recipe for Jollof Rice, which is one of the most popular West African dishes enjoyed by many countries. Since learning how much simpler it was to prepare with Minute Ready to Serve rice, it has been my go-to for quick and easy West African recipes. Another West African staple I’ll share today is called Potato Greens, which is a sort of sauce made with fresh greens and meats and served with rice. It’s also one of my mom’s favorites and so I get to share her recipe secrets for this one. Yay!
I was especially excited to introduce my mom to a tasty and even more wholesome twist to this recipe by serving it instead with any of the new Minute Ready to Serve products – including Minute Ready to Serve Organics, White & Red Quinoa, and gluten-free Multi-Grain Medley. Each of these are certified organic by the USDA, gluten-free and preservative free.
These Minute Ready to Serve products are an ideal portable solution for any time of the day, but she was especially excited once I showed her how she could enjoy her favorite dish during her lunch break at work! It only takes 60 seconds to prepare a fully cooked, single portion of rice and comes packaged with 2 individual single-serve cups…you know, in the event that you feel like sharing.
West African Recipes – Liberian Potato Greens
- 2 large bunches of potato greens sold in local farmers markets or international grocery stores
- 1 onion
- 1-2 lbs of various meats of your choice – Season ahead of time for best results
- Vegetable oil
- Seasoned salt
- onion powder
- chicken bullion cubes.
- Optional: Baking soda
-
Wash your potato greens thoroughly, remove from stems, and chop into small pieces. Set aside.
-
Combine onion and meats into a large pot and sauté in vegetable oil until they are almost fully cooked. Remove from pot.
-
Add the greens into the pot in the remaining oil and fry until greens become tender (Approx. 15 minutes), stirring frequently. Optional: Add a pinch of baking soda to the greens prior to frying for color.
-
Combine all ingredients into the pot, season and add enough water to just slightly cover all of the ingredients.
-
Season to taste with seasoned salt, onion powder, chicken bullion cubes
-
Cook over medium heat until all water is absorbed, stirring frequently (about 30 minutes).
-
Remove from heat and serve with your choice of Minute® Ready to Serve Organics White Rice, Brown Rice or Quinoa with Brown Rice
Serve with any variety of new Minute® Ready to Serve products”
[ezcol_1half]
Try it with Minute Rice Ready to Serve Quinoa with Brown Rice.
Also delicious with Minute Ready to Serve Brown Rice
For even more recipe ideas and information about the Minute® Rice family of products, be sure to visit HERE! You’ll find tons of recipe ideas great for any day of the week and any time of the day!
More West African Recipes: Liberian Jollof Rice Recipe
This looks like an interesting dish. I’ve never heard of potato greens before. Sounds unique! 🙂
Yeah, it’s traditional in my country. It’s so tasty and pretty healthy too.
Hmm you’re making me hungry! Maybe I shall have this for dinner!
Let me know how it turns out!
This looks really good and unique and fairly easy to make, too!
I was not even in the know about the rice coming in such small packs. Thanks for sharing the recipe and the product thanks
This looks delicious! To be honest I have no idea about african kitchen, but this dish looks just too good
im craving for it right now! i should try this on my kitchen, looks delicious!
I love rice and international cuisine… have never treated my tastebuds with West African food though. Guess it’s time to do that :p yummy !!
This looks both healthy and delicious! Thank you for sharing such yummy recipe.
Going to the store right now , dinner to night!
Let me know how it turns out!
What kind of potato greens do you use?
Sweet potatoes, russet, yellow, red? Does it matter?
They are usually sweet potato greens. In some farmer’s markets, they will just be labeled “potato greens,” but they are from sweet potato.
Sweet potato leaves, really. That’s the main ingredient. Can be purchased in Chinese market, and off course int’l food stores as well. Just had some recently and it was delicious. Added a few sweet basil leaves for added flavor and it turned out just right.
It would probably be a good idea to note in the recipe that this is made with sweet potato greens, not greens from ordinary “white” potatoes, which have highly toxic leaves! It could be dangerous if someone thought they could gather potato leaves from their garden to make this recipe. Potatoes are a member of the nightshade family, all of which contain a highly toxic alkaloid in parts of the plant (although which parts varies from one species to the next, e.g. potato berries are poisonous, but tomatoes aren’t). Whereas sweet potatoes are in a totally different botanical family and most (or maybe all?) parts of the plant are safe to eat.
I’ll look out for sweet potato greens and hopefully have a go at making this one day!
What do you season the meat with and what meats do you typically use?
I use a mixture of seasoned salt, black pepper, garlic and onion powder, and Maggi liquid seasoning.
Like Saskia says, do not use potato greens. Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) greens, which are what this recipe uses, are totally edible, but potato (Solanum tuberosum) greens are usually poisonous and can be extremely poisonous depending on the variety. I assume Liberians just say “potato” for the vegetable called “sweet potato” in the rest of the English speaking world because they don’t grow literal potatoes there much. These should also not be confused with yams (Dioscorea species), which may or may not have edible greens depending on the species.