Beef is less common, so you might start to miss hamburgers if you come to Malawi. The chicken is usually cooked on a grill. Malawians rarely eat fried chicken, though they can at the KFC in my city!
Nsima is very fun to eat because you get to use your hands. The taste is very plain. It tastes similar to rice. You might like it if you are a picky eater. I find rice and nsima a little boring. I like the greens and beans more. And I love the red sauce, which tastes like salsa to me.
The food I eat at my favorite restaurant, an Ethiopian restaurant, is similar. You also eat it with your hands— no spoons or forks allowed. And you pick up the food with a flatbread called injera. (Everything comes on top of the injera, plus, you get more injera on the side.) Ethiopian food can be very spicy, which I love!
I feel good about eating vegetables and fruit in Malawi because it’s really fresh. Sometimes, we get so many vegetables at the market that we do not know how we will eat it all. My favorite kind of fruit is papaya.
For nsima, you start with cornmeal, which is corn ground up into a fine powder. You mix the cornmeal with water in a big pot and stir it constantly. It will start to thicken. You will get a workout trying to keep stirring the thick mixture! Once it is thick enough, you use a special big spoon to make nsima patties.
Most people burn coal when they are cooking. At home, your stove is probably heated by gas or electricity. But, not everyone in Malawi has gas and electricity in their house. Coal makes kitchens hot and smoky.
