Palm nut pulp
Also called: jus de noix de palme, banga, palm nut cream, palm nut concentrate, sauce graine, palm soup base
Palm nut pulp comes from the fruit of the oil palm. The nuts are boiled, pounded, then worked in hot water and pushed through a sieve to separate a thick orange juice from the fibre and kernels. The result is creamy, with a palm flavour softer and rounder than red palm oil, which is only one part of it.
In southern and central Cameroon this juice is the cooking base of several dishes. Lumo has three recipes that use it: okok salé and okok sucré from the South, and sanga from the Centre, where it cooks with fresh corn and leaves. If you start from fresh nuts, pick ripe ones, reddish orange, with no mould. Boil them until the flesh comes away, pound them, add hot water a little at a time and squeeze by hand over a sieve, two or three times. Fresh juice keeps a day or two in the fridge and freezes well.
Outside Africa, most cooks use the canned version, sold in African grocery shops as palm nut cream, palm soup base or sauce graine. Once opened, move it to a covered container and keep it in the fridge for a few days. There is no substitute. Palm oil on its own gives neither the body nor the taste of the juice.
Recipes with this ingredient
- Okok Salé Sud · 2 hr
The savoury southern Cameroon (Beti/Bulu) version: finely pounded okok leaves simmered in palm-nut juice with beef, smoked fish and crayfish.
- Okok Sucré Sud · 2 hr
The sweet southern Cameroon version: pounded okok leaves cooked in palm-nut juice with roasted peanuts and a touch of sugar, without fish or seasoning cubes.
- Sanga Centre · 1 hr 10 min
A Centre-region dish of fresh maize and nzom leaves cooked in palm-nut juice, lightly sweetened.