Food

You will find tomato-based stews with complex flavors throughout Ghana. The stews usually contain a type of marine or freshwater fish and are eaten with a dough, which is used to scoop up the fish and soak up the fragrant sauce.

The dough, sometimes called fufu or akple, is made from any type of starch, including cassava, plantain, yam, maize, millet, sorghum, potatoes or cocoyams.

Another staple of Ghanaian cuisine is jollof rice, a kind of biryani flavored with tomatoes and chili. Peanuts are often used to flavor stews and garnish dishes. You’ll also find taro leaves and okra in many dishes.

Street food is a beloved Ghanaian custom, so be sure to buy a few takeaway meals in the market, or sit down at a streetside ‘restaurant’ when you visit.

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

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