Uganda's signature stick meat: fist-sized chunks of goat, beef, pork or chicken impaled on long wooden skewers and roasted leaning around open charcoal fires, then hawked through bus windows at highway stops like Namawojjolo on the Kampala–Jinja road. It is classically paired with gonja (roasted plantain) on its own stick, and its name shares the Bantu root 'to roast' with East Africa's nyama choma.
Also known as: mchomo, muchomo wa mbuzi, roadside muchomo, Ugandan meat on sticks
Watch it made
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg goat leg and shoulder (or beef/pork), fist-size 5 cm chunks
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp grated ginger and 3 garlic cloves (optional, many stalls use salt alone)
- 1 tbsp oil
- 4 gonja (sweet plantains), unpeeled
- 2 tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 chili and lime, for kachumbari
How to make it
- 1
Rub the goat chunks with salt (plus ginger-garlic and oil if using) and spear them onto long, sturdy sticks, 4-5 chunks each.
- 2
Prop the skewers leaning over the coals rather than directly above — Ugandan roadside muchomo roasts slowly at the fire's shoulder.
- 3
Cook 35-45 minutes, rotating the sticks every 8-10 minutes, until the chunks are deep brown and firm right through; muchomo is served well done, never pink.
- 4
Throw the gonja on the grill for the last 15 minutes until the skins blacken and the inside steams sweet.
- 5
Slice tomato, onion and chili with lime into kachumbari and serve everything off the stick.
Pro tip: The lean-away angle is the trick: direct high heat blackens fist-size chunks raw at the core, while the slow lean cooks them through to the Ugandan standard.
