Ghanaian Recipes

From Kontomire Stew to Kenkey, Ghana Jollof Rice to Wasawasa. Everything Ghanaian cooks, as it is cooked at home.

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Kenkey

Kenkey is fermented maize dough, wrapped in banana leaf or corn husk and steamed into firm parcels. It is sour, and the sourness is the whole character of it. The fermentation runs one to three days before anything is cooked, and a kenkey that has been rushed is immediately identifiable to anyone who eats it regularly. It comes from the Ga people of Accra and the surrounding coast, who have been making it for centuries, and it has spread across Ghana without losing that origin. Ga kenkey and Fante kenkey are recognised as distinct: the wrapping differs, and so does the ratio of fermented to fresh dough, which changes how sour the finished parcel is. Kenkey is street food in the most functional sense. It is bought in its wrapping, which serves as the plate, and eaten with fried fish, shito and a raw pepper and tomato grind, standing up or sitting on a bench. The wrapping is not presentation; it is what the dough is steamed in and what keeps it for days without refrigeration. That combination of sour dough, hot pepper and fried fish is one of the most recognisable plates in West Africa.

Highest Rated

55 minMediumGhana

Recipe by Laila · Africook

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Kenkey With Sauce and Fried Fish

Kenkey with pepper sauce and fried fish is a complete plate rather than a dish with accompaniments, and the three parts are not interchangeable with anything else. The sour fermented maize, the raw ground pepper and the well seasoned fried fish each do something the other two cannot, and the combination is what people mean when they say kenkey. The sourness is the axis. Maize is steeped for around two days, milled, and left to ferment for several more before any cooking happens, and the acidity that develops is what makes the plate work against fried fish. Ghanaian, Togolese and Beninese coastal cooking pairs sour starch with fried seafood repeatedly, and this is the clearest example of it. Anyone who does not already eat fermented cereals such as ogi, koko or eko tends to need a plate or two before the logic lands. The dish carries its names with it. Komi among the Ga, dokono among the Fante, dorkunu and dokonou across Togo and Benin. It travelled further than that: to Jamaica and Guyana as dokono and konkee, and to Trinidad as paime, carried across the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans, where it survives with different fillings and the same technique.

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2 hr 25 minHardGhana · Beninese

Recipe by Cuisine228 · Africook

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Ghanaian Chicken Light Soup

Light soup is one of Ghana's most eaten soups, and the name is descriptive rather than dismissive. It carries no palm oil, no groundnut paste and no thickener, so what remains is a clear, hot, deeply flavoured broth built on tomato, onion, ginger and habanero, with the chicken cooked in it rather than added to it. That absence is what defines it against the country's other soups. Palm nut soup and groundnut soup are both rich and heavy; light soup is the counterweight, and Ghanaians reach for it when they want something restorative. It has a widespread reputation as the soup given to people who are unwell and to women after childbirth, which reflects both its clarity and its heat. Fufu is the standard partner, and the combination of light soup and fufu is the one most often named when Ghanaians are asked about their national dish. It is served at restaurants and at events more than it is made casually at home, partly because pounding fufu is work. The technique that matters is the steaming of the seasoned chicken before any water goes in, which builds the stock the soup is made of.

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1 hr 35 minEasyGhana

Recipe by Amanda Dadson · Africook

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Light Soup

Light soup is Ghanaian, and the name describes its body rather than its strength. It is a thin, clear, tomato-based broth with no thickener at all, no palm nut, no groundnut paste, no ground seeds, which sets it apart from most of the soups it sits beside on a Ghanaian table. It is documented as originating with the Ga-Dangme people of the Greater Accra region, and specifically as a fishermen's soup. The early form was tomato-based and made with sea fish, called aklo or aklor, cooked on the coast around Accra. Over time it broadened to take goat, lamb or chicken, and today it is as likely to be made with meat as with fish. Its reputation is partly medicinal. A hot bowl of light soup, made properly peppery, is what many Ghanaian households reach for when someone has a cold, and it is common comfort food in a way that goes beyond flavour. The standard partner is fufu, and the pairing is close to fixed, fufu and light soup is a single idea in Ghanaian eating rather than two things served together. It is also eaten with omo tuo, the rice balls, and with banku. Because there is no thickener, everything depends on the stock: the soup tastes of what went into it and has nowhere to hide.

Highest Rated

EasyGhana

Recipe by FoodChef · Africook

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