What foods do you eat in Ghana?

Kwame Ofosu explores some of the foods and drinks commonly eaten in Ghana.

When it comes to breakfast, in Ghana, it is not the most popular meal of the day. Many folks prefer to wait until around 10:30am or even until lunch to eat a heavy dish.

However, there are people who wake up hungry. So from 6am, there are corporate workers, blue collar workers, students, labourers, traders, taxi drivers, policemen, nurses, and the fraud boys, waiting in line to buy waakye pronounced “waaaacheeeeyyyy, I’m playing it’s simply “waachey’.

Waakye is a mixture of beans and rice accompanied by salad, taalia (spaghetti), hard boiled eggs, fish, meat, gaari, shito, and wele (leather/ cow hide) .

Usually Moslem women from the North, sell the porridge ‘Hausa koko’. Hausa koko is very thick and includes sugar, milk and groundnuts. Koose is a deep-fried bean recipe doughnut like bofrot, which can be added.

Cheese wagashi is a type of West African cheese made from cows’ milk that can be fried. For those with dairy cravings, it is sold on the streets.

When obroni (white people) introduced tea to Ghana, tea was just tea but it has since become a blanket term for any hot drink. So instead of asking for tea, ask by brand name Lipton (tea) Nescafé (coffee) Milo (sweet chocolate malt drink), This Way (instant chocolate drink) Cowbell coffee (coffee).

Ghana has a variety of breads. Tea bread, (which is better eaten with egg, sugar bread, brown bread, and soft and frequently easier to find butter bread.

One advantage of eating street food is you can find a bit of this or that. It is a more interesting way of eating locally, and it’s cheaper than eating at a resort or a high-priced five-star restaurant where you’re confined to one specific dish.

Street food vendors often sell grilled poultry (guinea fowl, chicken) spicy beef, goat kebabs, plantain chips, smoked fish, hard-boiled eggs with tasty pepper relish stuffed in between.

We also have Ghana-made Kingsbite chocolate - not a surprise since you know Ghana is a big producer of cocoa worldwide.

As for vegetables (onions, pepper, and ginger), and fruits (tomatoes, oranges, pineapples, watermelons, coconuts) can be found throughout the country. Coconuts are skinned in a way to ensure that the consumer can enjoy them without getting sticky fingers.

Soybean are available at markets and makes excellent soy milk. It is typically blended with milk and water. There is also ice kenkey, brukina, nkate cake (ground nut bars), pooloo (a fried coconut snack). Brukina is made from milled and steamed millet, fermented cow's milk, sugar, and sometimes vanilla extract.

Poloo

Another typical dish is jollof rice but I don’t get why it is so hyped particularly as I don’t find it delicious.

Kwame is a keen writer who enjoys writing about the sights and sounds of Ghana. He plans to expand his writing to cover Burkina Faso, Mali and Ivory Coast.