There was a time when preparing a Nigerian meal began long before the cooking pot went on the fire. It could start with soaking beans overnight, gathering firewood, washing ingredients and sitting beside a grinding stone to process pepper, egusi or beans.

For some families, preparing food meant hours of pounding, grinding, chopping and stirring, with different hands joining in to get the work done.

Today, the case is different. A blender whirs for a few minutes, a food processor handles what once required considerable effort, and an air fryer cooks food with little or no oil. In some homes, even the preparation of traditional foods like pounded yam has moved from the mortar and pestle to a machine.

The Nigerian kitchen has not simply acquired more appliances. It has undergone a change in how time, effort and even responsibility are organised around food.

However, the argument over whether traditional methods produce better food has not disappeared with the old manual methods.

Some Nigerians maintain that ingredients processed manually have a distinctive taste or texture.

For 58-year-old Mariam Adeyinka, the difference is particularly striking. Growing up in Iseyin, Oyo State, Adeyinka’s childhood kitchen was built around manual labour. She helped her mother hawk akara, which meant preparing large quantities of beans for sale. “We grind the beans for the akara the night before and it was in a lot of quantity,” she recalled.

Grinding the beans was only one part of the process. After that came gathering firewood for frying and other tasks involved in preparing the akara. At the time, however, Adeyinka did not necessarily see the work as unusual. There was no blender waiting on the kitchen counter and no gas cooker that could replace the firewood. The hard work was simply what cooking required.

“Honestly, for me then, it was stressful, but as there was no other alternative like blender or gas cooker, it looked like the norm for me,” she said. Beyond that, pepper, egusi and other ingredients were also processed with the grinding stone.

That kind of labour, repeated every day, was once an ordinary part of food preparation for many Nigerian households. According to Adeyinka, she still owns a grinding stone, but largely as a reminder of the past.

What she does not want, however, is for her children to experience the same level of physical labour. “I can’t subject my children to that kind of labour. I have a blender and other food processors.”

Her kitchen now contains several appliances, including a blender and food processor. She is also looking forward to buying a swallow maker, another example of how technology is gradually taking over tasks that once required considerable physical effort.

For Adeyinka, this is not about rejecting the past. It is about refusing to make hardship a requirement simply because previous generations endured it.

Responding to whether traditional methods produce better food than food processors, Adeyinka disagrees. She said: “There is no difference. Once you have your ingredients right, you are good to go”

Even within her home, there is disagreement. Her husband prefers stew made with pepper ground on a grinding stone, while she remains convinced that the method makes no meaningful difference.

Her embrace of modern kitchen technology extends beyond grinding. One appliance she is particularly pleased with is her air fryer, which allows her to prepare food with less oil. “At my age, I am 58 years old, so I should not be eating too much oil,” she said.

For her, the appeal of the modern kitchen is therefore not only speed. It is also convenient and the possibility of adapting cooking to changing needs.

On his part, Benjamin Oluwatobiloba, believes the mortar and pestle brings back a different kind of memory. As a boy, he was not particularly involved in kitchen work. As a male child, he said, cooking was generally not part of his responsibilities. But there was one task that he could not escape whenever his family wanted pounded yam, it was his responsibility to pound it with the local mortal. “When we had to eat pounded yam, it was always reserved for me and my dad to do the pounding,” he said.

The stress of this responsibility became so associated with the dish that pounded yam eventually became one of his least favourite foods just so he doesn’t have to do it.

Years later, now married, he has encountered a very different approach to preparing it. His wife enjoys pounded yam but does not use a mortar and pestle. Instead, she uses a food processor. “The interesting part is that the pounded yam comes out better – it looks smoother and feels better than what we used to make with pestle and mortar growing up,” he said.

His experience illustrates another dimension of the technological shift: appliances are not merely saving time; they are changing who has to perform certain domestic tasks and how those tasks are perceived.

As technology gradually found its way into Nigerian kitchens and neighbourhoods, grinding also began to move beyond the grinding stone. By the 1990s, commercial grinding machines had become a familiar sight in many communities, offering an easier alternative for people who needed to process pepper, beans and other ingredients. It was an early stage in the shift from doing everything by hand to relying on machines.

The machines did not yet mean that every household had its own appliance. Instead, people took their ingredients to commercial grinders within their neighbourhoods, paid to have them processed and returned home with food preparation made a little easier. It was a gradual transition: from grinding stones, to commercial grinding machines, and eventually to blenders and food processors that brought the machinery directly into the home.

Oluwatobiloba’s wife now owns a blender that he estimates cost about ₦250,000. The enthusiasm with which he embraces such appliances is a sharp contrast to the labour he remembers from childhood.

For Chef Milam Kinpye Favour, who has watched cooking practices from a professional perspective, these individual experiences reflect a broader transformation. “The Nigerian kitchen has changed tremendously over the years,” she said.

According to her, many Nigerian homes once relied heavily on mortar and pestle, grinding stones, charcoal stoves and kerosene cookers. Food preparation could be physically demanding and time-consuming, particularly when meals were being prepared for large families or events. Modern kitchens now increasingly contain blenders, food processors, gas cookers, air fryers and electric pressure cookers. Equipment that was once considered a luxury is also becoming more accessible to small-scale food businesses.

The most significant change, she said, is efficiency. Tasks that previously took hours can now be completed within minutes. A blender can process ingredients quickly, while a food processor can handle vegetables and other ingredients with considerably less manual preparation.

For professional cooks and caterers, the impact goes beyond convenience. “These tools improve consistency and productivity,” she said. “For families, they make it easier to prepare homemade meals despite busy schedules.”

The change is particularly relevant in urban environments, where long working hours and increasingly busy routines leave many people with less time to devote to food preparation.

The modern kitchen therefore becomes an extension of a wider change in lifestyle. The objective is no longer necessarily to spend as much time as possible preparing a meal, but to find ways of reducing repetitive work while still producing familiar food.

Yet technology has not completely settled the question of whether traditional methods are better.

Chef Kin believes there are cases where they remain difficult to replicate with machines. “Pounded yam, peppers, spices and certain condiments prepared with a mortar and pestle can have a different texture and flavour profile because the crushing action affects the ingredients differently,” she said.

Experienced cooks may also notice differences between hand-pounded ingredients and those processed by machines. But she does not see the issue as a straightforward battle between old and new.

“Traditional methods are not necessarily better in every situation. They are simply different. Modern appliances provide speed and convenience, while traditional techniques often offer depth of flavour, texture and authenticity.”

For Nigerian cooks, this has created a kitchen where the old and new can coexist. A blender can process pepper for a pot of stew while a mortar and pestle remains stored somewhere in the kitchen. A food processor can make pounded yam without the pounding. An air fryer can replace deep-frying for someone trying to reduce the amount of oil in their diet.

Technology, in other words, has not necessarily changed what Nigerians want to eat. It has changed how they get there.

Chef Kin believes Nigerians still want their traditional dishes to retain their familiar character. Jollof rice, egusi soup, ogbono, afang, nkwobi and pepper soup may now be prepared with modern equipment, but the desire for recognisable flavours remains.

At the same time, modern appliances are opening the door to experimentation.
Cooks can adapt recipes, explore different cooking techniques, experiment with healthier preparation methods and present familiar dishes in new ways.

The rise of fusion cooking, modern plating and creative interpretations of Nigerian food reflects this overlap between tradition and technology. But there is another side to the transformation.

As fewer young people learn how to grind ingredients manually, pound food or prepare certain dishes using traditional techniques, some of the knowledge attached to those practices could disappear.

Chef Kin is however concerned about what happens if convenience eventually makes the knowledge of traditional techniques unnecessary. “The traditional practice I hope never disappears is the deliberate transfer of culinary knowledge. That knowledge includes understanding indigenous ingredients, traditional cooking methods, flavour development and the cultural meaning attached to food.”

The kitchen was once a place where cooking and social interaction happened simultaneously. As the work becomes faster and more individualised, some of those interactions may also become less common.

Still, the Nigerian kitchen is unlikely to become entirely modern or entirely traditional. The grinding stone can remain in a cupboard even when the blender is used every day. A food processor can make pounded yam while the mortar and pestle survives as part of a family’s memory. An air fryer can sit beside the gas cooker while traditional recipes continue to dominate the dining table.

The modern Nigerian kitchen is therefore less a replacement of the old kitchen than an accumulation of generations of cooking practices. And perhaps that is the most visible measure of the kitchen’s evolution: tasks that once demanded strength, time and several helping hands can increasingly be completed with the press of a button, leaving Nigerians to decide on whether tradition or technology must win, but which parts of tradition are worth carrying into the future.