Atassi is a dish traditionally made with rice and black-eyed peas or African brown beans. If you are not in Africa, you may need to go to international food stores or African market /groceries stores to get the brown beans.
You can also use dried small red beans, which I used in this recipe. They are very easy to get in any groceries store where I live and are a pretty good substitute for the African brown beans.
Total Cooking Time: 2h15 min
Serving: 4
Ingredients:
- 1 cup small dried red beans
- 2 cups white rice
- 10 cups water
- 3 cups warm water
- 1 Tbsp salt
Steps:
- Rinse beans thoroughly with water.
- Combine beans and 10 cups of water in a medium or large pot.
- Put the pot over a medium-high heat and cook the beans until tender, about 1h30 min.
- Add 3 cups warm water and let it boil for 5 min
- Add salt
- Rinse rice and add it to the beans
- Stir slowly to blend it together
- Cook until the water goes down about 10 min
- Put the heat down to low
- Cover with aluminum paper.
- Cover and cook for 25 min until rice is fully cooked
Serve Atassi with fried tomato sauce. Some people add fried chicken, fried fish, or even boiled eggs. I personally believe that the beans are packed with proteins, so no need to add any animal proteins to it. It is delicious with or without!
Bon appetit!