Igbo Cold Dish · Cassava Salad
Abacha (African Salad)
Photo: NiferO / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The cassava strips are shredded and sun-dried well in advance, so a plate of abacha is assembled cold in minutes — no cooking happens at the point of sale at all.
Abacha is made from cassava tubers that are boiled, sliced into thin strips, and dried, then soaked and tossed cold with palm oil, potash, ground crayfish, garden eggs, and ugba (fermented oil bean seed). Vendors sell it from coolers as a ready-to-eat, tangy snack.
Why it's made this way: Its Igbo roots run deep enough that abacha is often simply called African salad nationwide, a marker of how strongly the dish represents southeastern Nigerian food culture.
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