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Haifiridzi beef leafy greens mix

Beef Hifiridzi (Video)- Beef Short Ribs with Leafy Greens

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Join me in making this tasty all-time favourite for many in and from Zimbabwe.

This is Beef Hifiridzi which many of us grew up eating and continue to eat & enjoy to this day. This dish takes its name Hifiridzi from Highfield, one of Harare’s oldest suburbs.

Houses around Highfield and many other suburbs across Zimbabwe usually have a small garden in the backyard for growing leafy greens. Take the leafy greens and add to your meat and you instantly beef up (pun intended) your dish and feed many.

So this is how it’s going to go down…we are going to start by preparing our ingredients. We first cut the onion, then garlic, tomatoes, leafy greens and finally the meat. 

Some have asked me how to achieve decent looking strips when cutting leafy greens. I will also be demonstrating how to achieve tolerable leafy greens that don’t look like chunks:) So pay closer attention to the technique.

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After this we will proceed to fry the meat in a pot. You will notice that we use very little oil to fry the meat. This is because the meat here already has some fat. Although I will take deliberate steps to trim some of the fat off, what remains will cook the meat. Let the meat fry itself hehehe.

Furthermore, we will fry the meat in batches to avoid overcrowding the pot. We will return the fried batches to the pot and begin adding the other ingredients. 

Along the way, we shall be very careful not to overdo the veggies. The goal here is to serve them nice and green with some nutrients still intact.

Finally, we will serve our tasty Hifiridzi dish. The most common accompaniment to this dish is Sadza. This can be roller meal (mugayiwa) Sadza, gorosi (wheat) Sadza or any type of Sadza (btw see my classic video on this channel on how to make Sadza). You are also welcome to serve this dish with bread. That will taste really nice too!

Also see  Creamy Beef Stew with muriwo (leafy greens)

This dish serves 4 – 5 people and will require the following…

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  • 1kg beef short ribs

  • 2 cloves garlic

  • 1 medium onion

  • 2 large tomatoes

  • 1 bundle leafy greens 

  • 2 tsp salt

  • 1 tsp paprika

  • 3/4 tsp curry powder

  • 50 ml water for deglazing

  • 1 tbsp oil

Quick QnA

#1. Why did you include paprika, garlic and curry powder?

I did this to spice things up (pun intended). However, these can be left out for any reason as per your preference.

#2. What is deglazing?

Deglazing is adding liquid to a pan or pot to “clean up” the base of your pot when frying meat. This helps in adding flavour to the dish. Deglazing  is also used to make sauce or gravy that is rich in flavor thanks to the bits in the pot.

#3. Why beef short ribs?

I chose to use beef short ribs because they pack a punch of flavour better than the other beef cuts for this particular recipe, in my opinion.