A kitchen is known to be a room or section in the house where food is kept and prepared. A kitchen can be identified by the type of equipment setup in the area.
Nigeria, being a country with over two hundred and fifty tribes, with each tribe having its food culture have varying kitchen settings, but one thing is common to all
Kitchen habits in Nigerian homes are regular practices that we find it so hard to give up. Many of us inherited these habits from our mothers, and it has found its way into our system so much that we see it as norms. These habits include but not limited to:
- Licking the fingers after adding seasoning.
- Washing hand into the food after adding spice. After adding our spices, we don’t want any residue on our hand, so we wash it off into the food as if without that, the food will not be ok.
- Licking the spoon used for scooping while cooking in the name of tasting.
When cooking, if food is to be tasted, we can just scoop some and take a teaspoon to scoop little out of it to taste. But no. we prefer to lick the spoon with our fingers and sometimes tongue just in the name of tasting it. - Biting meat while cooking to check for doneness.
- Leaving used spoon on the pot for long hours and still reusing it. This is very common in most of our homes. We tend to leave our used spoon for hours and still reuse them afterwards. This practice is unknown to us, and it could cause infection because if rodents or insects find their way to the spoon, they create harmful bacteria on the spoon.
- Putting of foot on the sides of the pot with legs wide open while preparing swallow. We believe this practice allows us mix and turn the food well in other to make it very smooth and palatable to eat.
- Adding salt to food until our ancestors whisper ‘it’s ok’. We don’t have any measurement for salt. We only add salt until we feel its ok. Our salt measurement is our eyes.
- Tasting food to check for freshness.
- Adding sugar to boiled yam. We believe that adding sugar to yam while cooking makes it sweeter, but it does not. It actually does change the taste to some extent but that is not the major factor for it.
- Not using the right pot size
- Bleaching of oil while cooking. Many of us believe that when making stew, heating the oil until it changes to pale yellow make the stew sweeter. Unknown to us the smoke we inhale in the name of heating is harmful to our health. Also, overheating of oil loosen its health benefit.
- Using dull knife. Rather than sharpening our knife for easier cutting, we wait until we are ready to use it and then use our kitchen floor or stone to sharpen it a bit.
All of these habits are things we can do without, but we find it hard to stop because old habits die hard. Rather than stopping all these habits at once, you should select one at a time and work on it. One step at a time.