Nando's
Nando's Peri-Peri Chicken Copycat Recipe
A whole chicken opened flat, a day in the marinade, and a baste that only goes on in the last five minutes because it…
How to Make Nando's Macho Peas at Home
Macho Peas: Frozen Peas, Mint and Chilli, in Four Minutes
The greenest thing on any chain menu, for about eighteen pence a portion.
AI-generated illustration created for food.fast. It is not photographic evidence of a prepared batch.
This is the best-value recipe on the entire site. A bag of frozen peas, a bunch of mint, a chilli. Four minutes. Eighteen pence a portion against £2.45 in the restaurant.
It is also, genuinely, a very good side dish - fresh, hot, green and sharp, and it does something specific on a plate of grilled chicken that nothing else on the menu does.
The one thing to get right is the texture. These are crushed, not mashed and not whole: perhaps half the peas broken open and half intact, which gives you body and bite in the same spoonful. A stick blender turns this into pea purée, which is a nice thing and not this.
How this page shows its working
The method gives quantities, timings and observable cues rather than asking you to guess. The 4 cases in If it goes wrong explain likely causes and corrective action; 1 ingredient note explains choices that materially affect the result.
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Frozen peas are the right choice, and this is not a compromise
Peas are one of the very few vegetables where frozen is genuinely better than fresh for almost every purpose.
Peas start converting their sugars to starch the moment they are picked, and they do it fast - a pea is measurably less sweet within a few hours. Commercial freezing happens within about two and a half hours of picking, which locks the sugar in place. Fresh peas in a supermarket have usually been in transit and on a shelf for days.
So frozen peas are sweeter, greener and more consistent than almost any fresh peas you can buy, and they cost a fraction as much.
Cook them for three minutes, no more. Frozen peas are blanched before freezing, so they are already most of the way cooked. Overcooked peas go khaki and lose the sweetness the freezing preserved.
Fresh mint only, and it is not negotiable
Dried mint tastes of a completely different thing - dusty, hay-like and faintly medicinal. Fresh mint is the defining flavour here and there is no substitute for it. A supermarket packet costs less than a pound and the leftovers go in tea.
How to make it, step by step
Make it
-
Boil the peas for three minutes
Salted water, a rolling boil, three minutes from when they go in. They should be hot and bright green, still with a slight bite.
About 4 min -
Drain well and return to the dry pan
Really drain - water left clinging to the peas makes the finished dish loose and dilutes the dressing. Give the sieve a shake.
About 1 min -
Crush about half of them
Six or seven presses with a masher, off the heat. You want roughly half broken open and half whole. Stop well before it looks like mash.
TipCount the presses. It is very easy to go one too far and there is no way back.About 1 min -
Everything else in, off the heat
Mint, parsley, chilli, oil, lemon juice, peri-peri sauce, salt and pepper. Fold through. Adding the herbs off the heat keeps them green and keeps the mint tasting of mint.
About 1 min -
Taste for lemon, then serve immediately
It almost always wants a little more lemon. These are best within five minutes - the colour dulls and the mint fades after that.
About 1 min
Why it goes dull if it sits, and what to do about it
Two things happen over about twenty minutes.
Chlorophyll in the peas is degraded by acid, and there is lemon juice in this dish. The bright green shifts towards olive. The fix, if you are making it ahead, is to hold back the lemon juice and stir it in at the last moment.
And fresh mint loses its volatile oils to heat quickly. Mint stirred into hot peas is at its best for about ten minutes and noticeably flatter after thirty.
For a dinner party, cook and crush the peas, then cool them. Reheat briefly and add the herbs, oil and lemon at the point of serving. It takes ninety seconds and the difference is very visible.
Ways to change it once you have made it once
With feta
50 g crumbled over the top. Not in the original and very good.
Broad beans and peas
Half and half with frozen broad beans, skins slipped off. More texture, more work.
As a dip
Crush them all, add two extra tablespoons of oil and a crushed garlic clove. Serve with flatbread. This is essentially a pea hummus and it is excellent.
What went wrong, and how to fix it
Each entry names a likely cause as well as a correction, so the advice remains useful when equipment, ingredients or batch size differ.
It is pea purée
- Why it happened
- Over-crushed, or a blender was used.
- What to do
- Six or seven presses with a masher and stop. Nothing recovers purée.
Khaki rather than bright green
- Why it happened
- Overcooked, or left standing with the lemon in.
- What to do
- Three minutes only, and add the lemon at the last moment if making ahead.
Watery
- Why it happened
- Not drained properly.
- What to do
- Shake the sieve hard and let them steam dry in the hot pan for thirty seconds.
It tastes flat
- Why it happened
- Not enough lemon or salt, or dried mint.
- What to do
- Fresh mint, and taste for lemon at the end. This dish lives on acid.
Questions people actually ask about this recipe
Fresh or frozen peas?
Frozen, genuinely. They are frozen within hours of picking so they are sweeter and greener than most 'fresh' peas in a shop.
Can I use dried mint?
No. It tastes of something else entirely - dusty and medicinal. Fresh mint is the dish.
How crushed should they be?
About half broken, half whole. Six or seven presses with a masher.
Are they hot?
Moderately, and it is easy to adjust - one deseeded chilli is mild, one with seeds is noticeable.
Make these next
The recipes that go with this one, or that use what you have just made.
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A baguette, a compound butter with peri-peri in it, twelve minutes in the oven. About twenty pence a portion.
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Peri-peri sauce folded into mayonnaise. The ratio is the entire recipe and most people get it wrong in the same direction.