Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Jollof Rice along with all the recipes employing Jollof Rice presented on this site, with 52 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Jollof Rice recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Jollof Rice as a major wild food ingredient.



Jollof (/dʒəˈlɒf/), or jollof rice, is a rice dish from Senegal, West Africa. It is typically made with long-grain rice, tomatoes, chilis, onions, spices, and sometimes other vegetables and/or meat in a single pot, although its ingredients and preparation methods vary across different regions. In French-speaking West Africa, a variation of the dish is known as riz au gras. The Senegalese version, thieboudienne, has been recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage dish.

The Jolof or Wolof Empire was a confederacy state that ruled parts of West Africa situated in modern-day Senegal, Mali, The Gambia and Mauritania from around the 12th century and was later known as the Jolof Kingdom. According to African food historian Fran Osseo-Asare, the origins of jollof rice can be traced to the area, where rice was grown; the original dish was known as thieboudienne or thiebou djeun, and contains rice (originally West African glaberrima rice), fish, shellfish and vegetables. If made with meat, it's called ceebu yapp. The fishing communities of Saint-Louis are considered the birthplace of thieboudienne.

Food and agriculture historian James C. McCann argued that it was unlikely that the dish could have naturally spread from Senegal to its current range since a similar cultural diffusion is not seen in 'linguistic, historical or political patterns'. Instead, he proposed that the dish spread with the Mali empire, especially the Djula tradespeople who dispersed widely to the regional commercial and urban centres, taking with them economic arts of 'blacksmithing, small-scale marketing, and rice agronomy' as well as the religion of Islam. Indeed, the dish survives in Mali as tieb au poulet

The use of New World tomatoes, tomato paste, capsicum peppers (bell, chilli, paprika), Indian curry powder, Mediterranean thyme, and Asian rice varieties, may limit the origin of the current dish to no earlier than the 19th century, there being no evidence of the ingredients being locally cultivated or imported before this period. In Senegal, oral histories credit Penda Mbaye, a cook at the residence of one of the colonial rulers in Saint-Louis, Senegal, as having created the dish when she ran out of barley and substituted rice.

Almost every country in West Africa has its own version of Jollof Rice. (The name comes from the Wolof peoples of Senegambia and the dish was originally Wolof Rice, but soon became Jollof Rice). Indeed, the name survives as Wolof Rice or Riz Wolof in the Guinean version of the dish.

Benachin is also probably an antecedent of Jollof rice, evolving into Thieboudienne (chubbagin) in Senegambia, Jollof Rice in Anglophone West Africa and riz au gras in Franchophone west Africa.

Below you will find links to various recipes for Tiebs, Benachins, Riz au Gras and Jollof Rice from countries throughout West Africa.