The Guinness World Records has officially announced Hilda Baci as breaking the record for the largest serving of Nigerian style jollof rice.
And this time, she’s out to win the “Jollof Wars” for her home country.
Alongside brand Gino Nigeria, Hilda cooked up the largest serving of Nigerian style jollof rice last Friday – a whopping 8,780 kg (19,356 lb 9 oz) of the delicious dish.
Real name Hilda Bassey, the star served up the dish at an event in Victoria Island, Lagos, where thousands of people were in attendance and performers took to the stage.
Jollof rice is a staple dish in West Africa and there’s a big debate about who makes it best – Ghana or Nigeria.
The debate covers the ingredients that are used as well as the preparation methods.
Rules of the record stipulated that certain ingredients had to be used, and Hilda shared the exact measurements of everything she stirred into her record-breaking dish.
Her ingredients, cooked up in a gigantic pot, included 4,000 kg of washed basmati rice (the rice had to constitute at least 80% of the total weight), 164 kg of fresh goat meat, 220 kg of Gino Asun & peppered chicken cubes, and 600 kg of her own jollof pepper mix.
She said it took “nine hours of fire, passion and teamwork” and 1,200 kg of gas to create the 16,600 plates of rice “served with joy, love and community”.
Hilda and Gino Nigeria also had to follow strict rules when it came to the distribution of the food, with none of it allowed to be wasted.
A video posted to Hilda’s Instagram account shows the jollof rice being served up to all the hungry people who’d gathered in support and had to suffer through all those amazing smells before finally being able to dig in.
Impromptu chanting of “Hilda, we want jollof” broke out, with people in attendance simply desperate for a taste.
Hilda said of her attempt: “I didn’t realize it would be this hard and it has been a challenge. It’s a lot of hard work but really satisfying to achieve the record.
“This achievement also belongs to the people of Nigeria as they all contributed to the achievement.”
There is a record for largest serving of Ghanaian style jollof rice but it currently has no holder.
A massive crowd of thousands gathered to watch Hilda make her jollof rice
Hilda pretty much broke the internet in May 2023 when she claimed the record for longest cooking marathon (individual) with a time of 93 hr 11 min.
Her attempt in Lekki, Lagos, drew not just national, but international attention.
Thousands of people flocked to the site to watch Hilda in action in the kitchen, and so many people rushed to our website to see if she’d broken the record that it crashed.
Hilda sparked record-breaking fever across Africa, with applications flooding in for people keen to take on their own marathon attempts.
The longest cooking marathon is a highly competitive record, and has been broken twice since Hilda claimed the record.
Alan Fisher (Ireland) cooked for 119 hr 57 min 16 sec in October 2023 then Evette Quoibia (Australia) cooked for 140 hr 11 min 11 sec in February 2024.
