Everybody Loves Beef Suya

The iconic skewers of smoky, crispy meat (most commonly beef), seasoned with the piquant, peanutty spice rub yaji, are a crowdpleasing staple in the Nigerian community, whether you’re nabbing them fresh off the grill at a cookout or loading up your plate from a catering tray at a house party.

Once I grew old enough to tolerate their heat (a milestone that was bad news for my suya-obsessed brother, who had laid claim to all my portions before then), I fell in love with suya’s charry grill marks, deeply beefy flavor, and nutty, vibrant spices, and I always added some to my plate along with jollof rice, moin moin (Nigerian steamed bean cakes), and fried sweet plantains.

In Nigeria, suya (which originated with the Hausa people in the north of the country) is more commonly eaten as a street food, particularly in the bustling coastal city of Lagos.

As evening rolls around, locals eagerly wait for the suya men to fire up their grills and serve up newspaper packets of the piping hot meat and accompanying raw vegetables.

“The aroma fills the streets and beaches, drawing people in for the perfect bite of tender, crispy beef,” my friend Ugo Mozie, a Nigerian American fashion designer, recounted of a recent visit to Lagos. 

Suya is great to make when you’re entertaining because it requires minimal prep and even less time to cook: Just marinate the beef, thread it onto skewers, and grill for a few minutes on each side until it’s crisp.

It’s the yaji, the smoky, nutty spice blend sprinkled liberally over the meat before and after cooking, that does most of the heavy lifting flavor-wise, and if you prep a big batch and keep it on hand, making suya becomes even easier.

In Nigeria, many different versions of yaji are sold at markets. Some commercial blends are available at West African markets in the States (typically labeled as “suya spice”), but I like to make my own yaji blends so that I can tailor them to different recipes (in my cookbook AfriCali, I feature a version with a Kenyan twist of cardamom, a nod to both sides of my African heritage).

For beef suya, some Nigerian cooks like a wallop of sweat-inducing heat from chiles and/or peppercorns, while others foreground the warmth of ginger and cloves or the earthy complexity of the peanuts.

I like a balanced profile with dry-roasted peanuts as the base, ginger for zing, granulated garlic and onion for savor, smoked paprika to complement the flavors from the grill, and white and cayenne pepper for a kick of heat that would be gradually warming, not full-on fiery. 

While some recipes instruct the cook to grind the peanuts—either by hand or in a food processor—and then add the other spices, I found that doing so resulted in overprocessed peanuts, leaving me with a mixture that was more spicy peanut butter than rub.

Instead, I added the spices and peanuts to my food processor together and blitzed them carefully, stopping once the legumes had been reduced to fine grounds. 

To replicate the thin, flavorful slices of beef used for suya in Nigeria (the cut typically used there isn’t readily available in the United States), I turned to sirloin steak tips, a cut with deep, beefy flavor and tender chew.

Its large, coarse grain is ideal for grasping the spice rub, and its crevices would also help protect the spices and peanuts from charring too much in the heat of the grill.

I froze the beef briefly to firm it up and then cut it crosswise into thin, ⅛-inch-thick slices, creating plenty of surface area so that there would be seasoning and browning in every bite.

I tossed the meat with some oil, salt, and a portion of my spice rub and then set it aside for half an hour (but you could do this step a full 24 hours ahead if preferred) to allow the spices to penetrate the beef.

Then, I threaded a few strips of beef onto each of my metal skewers, pressing the slices as flat as possible to ensure they’d make maximum contact with the grate and develop crispy browning. 

In Nigeria, street vendors grill suya over hot coals or fires, charring the beef in just minutes.

The pros then pull the skewers off the grill and either serve them skewered or slide the meat off its stick and slice it, depending on what the customer requests.

They transfer the meat to a sheet of newspaper, adding a few handfuls of raw vegetables (usually some combination of cabbage, cucumber, tomato, and red onion) and an extra sprinkle of yaji before handing the bundle over.

To cook my suya, I heated my grill on high heat and then added the skewers and cooked them for just 2 to 4 minutes per side.

As the air filled with the scent of sizzling beef and roasted peanut, I pulled the skewers from the grill and arranged them on a serving platter.

Per tradition, I served them alongside raw vegetables for diners to add to their bites of meat for contrasting bursts of crisp and juicy freshness.

I sprinkled the beef with another flourish of spice rub and transferred more of the mix to a small bowl for dipping—and then it was time to get the party started.