The Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Kilimanjaro, and Zanzibar beaches are likely on your
Tanzania bucket list. Tanzanian food? The focus is big spices, hearty stews, and perfectly
barbecued meat. Discover the best Tanzanian dishes to try and how to maintain your health
during your time in Tanzania.
Top Tanzanian dishes
Ugali
Tanzanians eat ugali with almost every meal. This doughy porridge from boiled cornmeal paste
soaks up sauces and dips well.
Roll a piece into a ball, make an indentation with your thumb, and use it as a spoon! You'll soon
enjoy a hearty slab of ugali with every meal.
Tanzanian cuisine
Trafalgar's incredible trip to Mto wa Umbu lets you try ugali and other Tanzanian dishes. You'll
meet locals and walk through the village, passing farms, markets, and schools, soaking up the
community spirit. Before eating a local ladies' home-cooked lunch, you'll learn how they make
banana beer and try some.
While enjoying this delicious meal, hear about village life and how they make each dish. Most
importantly, your visit to the village will help these families.
Zanzibar pizza
Despite its name, this Zanzibar dish is not like Italian pizza. It's tasty and sold by street vendors
across Zanzibar.
Locals fill a thin dough sheet with meat, onions, peppers, raw egg, mayonnaise, and cheese. It's
wrapped and fried in ghee or oil until golden and crispy. Chocolate, bananas, peanut butter, and
mangoes are sweet options. Warning: Zanzibar pizza is addicting!
Pilau-Biryani
Indian migrants introduced these rice dishes to East Africa. Tanzania and Zanzibar serve some of
the best biryani and pilau with a Swahili twist.
Pilau is a one-pot rice dish with meat, stock, vegetables, and spices, while biryani is a tender
meat and potato stew in a spiced gravy with fragrant rice. Biryani and pilau are spiced
generously with cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, cardamom, cloves, and pepper, which
gives them their amazing flavor.
Mshikaki
Mshikaki is a traditional Tanzanian dish consisting of skewered pieces of marinated beef, goat,
or mutton that are slow-cooked over hot open coals. Street vendors serve it fresh after slow
roasting in the evening. These tangy, smoky meat skewers are addictive, so order several at once.
Chipsi Maya
Chipsi mayai, Swahili for "chips and eggs," is a Tanzanian street food favorite. Hand-cut
potatoes are peeled, fried, and mixed with eggs to make an omelet.
It's often served with a tangy tomato, onion, chili kachumbari, peppers, and onions. Eat it with a
toothpick and a squirt of ketchup like the locals.
Makaipaka
Tanzanians love makai paka and coconut-curried corn cobs. Corn, an East African staple, is
cooked in spiced coconut milk in this tasty dish. The locals serve it over fragrant rice for a
perfect summer dish.
Ndizi nyama
This popular Tanzanian dish is made with plantain bananas (dizi) and meat (nyama) stewed in
curry powder, cayenne pepper, tomatoes, onions, tomato paste, and coconut milk and served with
steamed rice or ugali.
Ndizi na nyama is traditionally made for new mothers in Tanzania to help them recover. After
traveling, this dish is perfect for refueling.
Samaki mchuzi
Mchuzi wa samaki is one of Tanzania and Zanzibar's best seafood dishes. This Swahili dish has
whitefish, curry powder, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and lemon juice. The sauce is served over
fluffy steamed rice.
Vitumbua
You must try mitumba in Tanzania! East Africans love doughnuts. Tanzanians use rice flour and
fry them in hot oil until fluffy, then dust them with icing sugar or cinnamon or serve it with fruitflavored dips.
Vitumbua can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dessert, or late-night snacking. Locals like it with
masala chai. Yum!
Nyamachoma
Nyama choma—burned meat—is a delicious barbecue. Locals grill goats slowly over hot coals
for a smoky flavor. While the meat cooks, you can chat and drink with the locals around the grill
Who hasn’t dreamed of going on a Tanzania Safari?
Safaris Tanzania is a dream of many all around the world.
Tanzania’s wilderness and wildlife are very unique and unmatched in size and diversity compared to anywhere else on the planet.
Tanzania abounds with incredible sights teeming with wildlife.
But is everything only clouds and rainbows at Tanzania?
They’re under increasing threat from the fast growing human settlements surrounding them.
On 15 May, a passenger flight ferrying humanitarian and health workers into Tanzania arrived from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
This is the first flight of its kind since commercial air services were suspended in Tanzania in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirusLink for Article
