🍜 Cuisine
Ghanaian food is hearty, spicy, starch-based and unapologetically flavorful. The national debate over who makes the best jollof rice — Ghana or Nigeria — is an ongoing West African drama (Ghana's version, with longer-grain rice and smokier tomato base, has devoted defenders).
🍚 Jollof Rice (Ghanaian Style)
Ingredients: 2 cups long-grain parboiled rice, 6 ripe tomatoes (blended), 2 red bell peppers, 2 scotch bonnet chilies, 1 large onion, 3 tbsp tomato paste, 4 tbsp palm or vegetable oil, 2 bay leaves, 1 tsp curry powder, 1 tsp thyme, 2 cloves garlic, 1 inch ginger, 2 Maggi cubes, salt, 2½ cups stock (chicken or vegetable).
Method: Blend tomatoes, peppers, scotch bonnets, onion, garlic and ginger to a smooth sauce. Heat the oil, fry the tomato paste for 2 minutes, pour in the blended sauce and simmer uncovered for 20–25 minutes until the oil separates and the stew is very thick and rich. Add bay leaves, curry powder, thyme, Maggi and salt. Wash the rice, stir it into the stew, then pour in hot stock to just cover. Cover tightly, reduce heat to very low, and steam for 25–30 minutes without stirring — this creates the coveted smoky bottom layer called "party jollof."
🥣 Fufu & Light Soup
Ingredients (fufu): 2 cups pounded yam flour or cassava/plantain dough. Soup: 500 g goat or chicken, 3 tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 scotch bonnet, 1 garden egg (African eggplant), 1 thumb ginger, 2 cloves garlic, salt.
Method: Boil goat with onion, salt and ginger for 30 minutes. Blend tomatoes, pepper and garlic, add to the pot with the garden egg and simmer 20 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare fufu by mixing flour with boiling water and kneading until smooth and elastic. Serve the soup in a wide bowl with the fufu ball to the side; Ghanaians traditionally eat with the right hand, tearing off pieces of fufu and dipping them.
Other staples: waakye (rice and beans cooked with millet leaves, served with shito chili paste, boiled egg, spaghetti and gari), kelewele (spicy fried plantain cubes), red-red (black-eyed bean stew with palm oil, served with fried plantain), banku (fermented corn dough) with tilapia and pepper, kenkey, and the ubiquitous chichinga beef kebabs with peanut-spice rub.
🍹 Cocktails & Mixed Drinks
🌴 Sobolo Rum Punch
Ingredients: 1 cup strong chilled sobolo (hibiscus infusion, sweetened), 50 ml dark rum, 15 ml lime juice, a pinch of grated ginger, ice, fresh mint.
Method: Shake rum, lime and ginger with ice, strain into a tall glass and top with cold sobolo. Garnish with mint and a lime wheel. Sobolo — made by steeping dried hibiscus flowers with ginger, pineapple peel and cloves — is the signature non-alcoholic drink of Ghana and mixes beautifully with rum.
🔥 Akpeteshie Sour
Ingredients: 45 ml akpeteshie, 25 ml fresh lime juice, 15 ml honey syrup, dash of angostura bitters, ice.
Method: Shake hard over ice and strain into a rocks glass. The honey tames the fierce palm-spirit; a pinch of smoked salt on the rim takes it further.
