Ghanaian cuisine

Ghanaian-style banku

The typical staple foods in the southern part of Ghana include cassava and plantain. In the northern part, the main staple foods include millet and sorghum. Yam, maize and beans are used across Ghana as staple foods. Sweet potatoes and cocoyam are also important in the Ghanaian diet and cuisine. With the advent of globalization, cereals such as rice and wheat have been increasingly incorporated into Ghanaian cuisine. The foods below represent Ghanaian dishes made out of these staple foods.

Foods made with yam

Locally made ampesie (plantain and garden eggs stew)

• Ampesie—boiled yam. It may also be made with plantain, cocoyam, potatoes, yams or cassava. This side dish is traditionally eaten with fish stew containing tomatoes, oil and spices.
• Yam fufu—fufu made with yam instead of cassava or plantain or cocoyam, this soft dough is traditionally eaten with Ghanaian soup. It is popular in Northern and southeastern Ghana.
• Mpotompoto (yam casserole or porridge)—slices of yam cooked with much water and pepper, onions, tomatoes, salt and preferred seasoning.
• Yam balls - This super sweet delicacy, yam balls, takes the form of scotch eggs, but in this case, it's got the fillings of meat pie, spring rolls, samosa, shawarma.
• Fried Yam - Deep-fried yam can be served with a variety of stews and pepper sauces. The chips are fried such that the outside is crispy and the inside is wet, blissful, and yummy.[8]
• Roasted Yam - This is one of the most popular street snacks. The white yam with brown bark is used to make this dish.[9]

Most Ghanaian side dishes are served with a stew, soup or mako (a spicy condiment made from raw red and green chilies, onions and tomatoes (pepper sauce)). Ghanaian stews and soups are quite sophisticated, with liberal and delicate use of exotic ingredients, a wide variety of flavours, spices and textures.

Vegetables such as palm nuts, peanuts, cocoyam leaves, ayoyo, spinach, wild mushroom, okra, garden eggs (eggplant), tomatoes and various types of pulses are the main ingredients in Ghanaian soups and stews and in the case of pulses, may double as the main protein ingredient.

Beef, pork, goat, lamb, chicken, smoked turkey, tripe, dried snails, and fried fish are common sources of protein in Ghanaian soups and stews, sometimes mixing different types of meat and occasionally fish into one soup. Soups are served as a main course rather than a starter. It is also common to find smoked meat, fish and seafood in Ghanaian soups and stews.

Koobi is dried tilapia that has been salted

They include crab, shrimp, periwinkles, octopus, snails, grubs, duck, offal, and pig's trotters. Also oysters.

Meat, mushrooms and seafood may be smoked, salted or dried for flavour enhancement and preservation. Salt fish is widely used to flavour fish based stews. Spices such as thyme, garlic, onions, ginger, peppers, curry, basil, nutmeg, sumbala, Tetrapleura tetraptera (prekese) and bay leaf are delicately used to achieve the exotic and spicy flavours that characterize Ghanaian cuisine.

Palm oil, coconut oil, shea butter, palm kernel oil and peanut oil are important Ghanaian oils used for cooking or frying and may sometimes not be substituted for in certain Ghanaian dishes. For example, using palm oil in okro stew, eto, fante fante,[10] red red or Gabeans, egusi stew and mpihu/mpotompoto (similar to poi).[11] Coconut oil, palm kernel oil and shea butter have lost their popularity for cooking in Ghana due to the introduction of refined oils and negative Ghanaian media adverts targeted at those oils. They are now mostly used in few traditional homes, for soap making and by commercial (street food) food vendors as a cheaper substitute to refined cooking oils.

Common Ghanaian soups are groundnut soup,[12] light (tomato) soup,[12] kontomire (taro leaves) soup, palm nut soup,[13] ayoyo soup and okra soup.

Ghanaian tomato stew or gravy is a stew that is often served with rice or waakye. Other vegetable stews are made with kontomire, garden eggs, egusi (pumpkin seeds), spinach, okra, etc.

Among the Ewes, some soups are prepared with gboma (solanum macrocarpa) and also yevugboma (European gboma. Water leaf) or ademe (jute mallow). These are eaten with the various varieties of akple or abolo (steamed corn dough) or yakayake (steamed cassava dough).

A bowl of tombrown with sausages, croissant pancakes, potatoes and an egg.

Making of koko (local porridge)

Most of the dishes mentioned above are served during lunch and supper in modern Ghana. However, those engaged in manual labour and a large number of urban dwellers still eat these foods for breakfast and will usually buy them from the streets. Another popular breakfast is called hausa koko (northern porridge). It is usually prepared in Northern Ghana, sweet, and often eaten with koose or bread with groundnuts.

In large Ghanaian cities, working-class people would often take fruit, tea, chocolate drink, oats, rice porridge/cereal (locally called rice water) or kooko (fermented maize porridge) and koose/akara or maasa (beans, ripe plantain and maize meal fritters).[14] Other breakfast foods include grits, tombrown (roasted maize porridge), and millet porridge.[14]

Bread is an important feature in Ghanaian breakfast and baked foods. Ghanaian bread, which is known for its good quality, is baked with wheat flour and sometimes cassava flour is added for an improved texture. There are four major types of bread in Ghana. They are tea bread (similar to the baguette), sugar bread (which is a sweet bread), brown (whole wheat) bread, and butter bread. Rye bread, oat bread and malt bread are also quite common.[15]

Etor is a popular dish in south Ghana, prepared with plantain or with yam boiled and mashed, and mixed with palm oil. Groundnuts (peanuts) and eggs are used to garnish the dish.

There are many sweet local foods which have been marginalized due to their low demand and long preparation process. Ghanaian sweet foods (or confectionery) may be fried, barbecued, boiled, roasted, baked or steamed.

Fried sweet foods include cubed and spiced ripe plantain (kelewele) sometimes served with peanuts. Koose made from peeled beans (and its close twin acarajé or akara made from beans which are not peeled), maasa,[16][17] pinkaaso,[18] and bofrot/Puff-puff[19] (made from wheat flour); waakye[20] dzowey and nkate cake (made from peanuts);[21] kaklo and tatale[22] (ripe plantain fritters); kube cake and kube toffee (made from coconut); bankye krakro, gari biscuit,[23][24] and krakye ayuosu (made from cassava); condensed milk, toffee, plantain chips (or fried plantain)[25] and wagashi[26] (fried farmer's cheese) are fried Ghanaian savory foods (confectionery).

Kebabs are popular barbecues and can be made from beef, goat, pork, soy flour, sausages and guinea fowl. Other roasted savoury foods include roasted plantain, maize, yam and cocoyam.

Steamed fresh maize, yakeyake, kafa, akyeke, tubani, moimoi (bean cake), emo dokonu (rice cake) and esikyire dokonu (sweetened kenkey) are all examples of steamed and boiled foods whilst sweet bread, (plantain cake), and meat pie similar to Jamaican patties and empanadas are baked savoury foods. Aprapransa, eto (mashed yam) and atadwe milk (tiger nut juice) are other savory foods. Gari soakings is a modern favorite. It is a blend of gari (dried, roasted cassava), sugar, groundnut (peanut) and milk.

Ghanaian beverages at a convenience store in Ghana

In southern Ghana, Ghanaian drinks such as asaana (made from fermented maize) are common. Along Lake Volta and in southern Ghana, palm wine extracted from the palm tree can be found, but it ferments quickly and then it is used to distill akpeteshie (a local gin). Akpeteshie can be distilled from molasses too. In addition, a beverage can be made from kenkey and refrigerated into what is in Ghana known as ice kenkey. In northern Ghana, bisaab/sorrel, toose and lamujee (a spicy sweetened drink) are common non-alcoholic beverages whereas pitoo (a local beer made of fermented millet) is an alcoholic beverage.

In urban areas of Ghana drinks may include fruit juice, cocoa drinks, fresh coconut water, yogurt, ice cream, carbonated drinks, malt drinks and soy milk.[27][28] In addition, Ghanaian distilleries produce alcoholic beverages from cocoa, malt, sugar cane, local medicinal herbs and tree barks. They include bitters, liqueur, dry gins, beer, and aperitifs.[29][30]

Street food is very popular in both rural and urban areas of Ghana. Most Ghanaian families eat at least three times a week from street food vendors, from whom all kinds of foods can be bought, including staple foods such as kenkey, red red and waakye. Other savoury foods such as raw steak, boiled corn cob, boflot (ball-float) and roasted plantain are sold mainly by street food vendors.

Ice kenkey is a popular chilled dessert sold by street vendors in open-air markets.[31]

Kosua ne meko (eggs with pepper) is a street food sold mostly by street vendors.[32]

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  Banku and grilled tilapia fish
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  Red-red: bean and fish stew with fried plantain
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  Beans, plantain, and chicken
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  "One Man Thousand": cooked shrimp and fried Tanganyika sardine
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  Ghanaian Kɔkɔ a y'atoto (nickname: Kofi Broke Man) charcoal-roasted ripe plantain
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  Ghanaian Banku Ne Mako (banku and pepper-tomato sauce)
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  Ghanaian style konkonte
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  Ghanaian fufu in palmnut soup with goat
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  Fufu and light tomato soup with meat
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  Fried yam with spicy chicken and kpakpo shito (ground green peppers)
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  Jollof rice with coleslaw and barbecue chicken
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  Kenkey with fried fish and chili pepper
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  Cooked yam and plantain, with "garden egg" (aubergine) stew and chicken
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  Ghanaian style spicy sauce
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  Ghanaian style spicy grilled kebab
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  Waakye (rice and beans) served with spaghetti and boiled egg
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  Ground red pepper, a Ghanaian delicacy, mainly an accompaniment for banku and kenkey
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  Tubaani
• 
  Tubaani wrapped in the leaves of Ewe eran

• Chop bar
• West African cuisine
• List of African cuisines
• La Tante DC10 Restaurant

There are a some cookbooks which concentrate on Ghanaian food, including the following:

• Osseo-Asare, Fran (2018). The Ghana cookbook. Barbara Baeta. New York: Hippocrene Books. ISBN 978-0-7818-1343-3. OCLC 896840053.

• Ghanaian food on Ghanaweb.com