Ghana sits on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, a country of 32 million people whose food culture is shaped by three distinct geographical zones — the coastal fishing communities of the south, the forest zone of the middle belt where cocoa and plantain and root vegetables grow, and the savanna of the north where millet and sorghum and the shea butter tree that produces the fat of northern Ghanaian cooking define the table — and by a culinary history that connects the indigenous Akan, Ewe, Ga, and Dagomba food traditions with the Portuguese and British colonial presence, the Indian spice trade routes, and the return of diaspora Ghanaians from the Americas and Europe who brought new techniques and ingredients back with them. Ghanaian food is not the same as West African food, despite the tendency of the international food media to flatten the entire region into a single category. It has its own specific ingredients — the kontomire (cocoyam leaves), the nkontomire stew, the prekese (the dried pod of the Tetrapleura tetraptera tree, a spice used in Ghanaian soups with a sweet, liquorice-adjacent flavour that is found nowhere else in cooking), the shito (the intensely flavoured black pepper sauce of dried fish, shrimp, chilli, and spices that is Ghana’s most specific condiment) — and its own cooking philosophy, built on slow-simmered soups and stews that are eaten with the fermented and pounded starches (fufu, banku, kenkey) that are among the most sophisticated starch preparations in African cooking. It is also the cuisine that claims the best jollof rice in the world, which is a claim that Nigeria disputes with considerable passion and that Ghana makes with a confidence that suggests the matter is settled.

Groundnut Soup and the Stews That Define the Ghanaian Table

Groundnut soup — nkatenkwan in Akan — is Ghana’s most important and most celebrated dish, and it is the preparation that most clearly expresses the Ghanaian kitchen’s philosophical approach to cooking: a complex, slow-simmered broth built on a base of roasted and ground peanuts, tomatoes, onion, and a spice mixture that varies by region and by household but always includes the foundational warmth of dried chilli and the fragrant depth of dried fish or smoked fish stock. The groundnuts (peanuts, indigenous to South America but integrated so completely into West African cooking since their 16th-century introduction that they now feel as native as the yam) are roasted, ground into a paste, and added to the tomato base with meat (goat, chicken, or beef), the whole combination simmered for hours until the soup has the characteristic glossy, slightly thick consistency of a peanut broth that has cooked down properly. Eaten with fufu — the fermented cassava and plantain dough pounded smooth and formed into a ball, placed in the centre of the soup bowl and eaten by pinching off small pieces and dipping them into the soup — groundnut soup is simultaneously the most labour-intensive and the most deeply satisfying preparation in the Ghanaian repertoire. Kontomire stew (nkontomire, made from cocoyam leaves cooked with palm oil, onion, tomatoes, dried fish, and sometimes crab) is the other essential stew — darker, more bitter, more specifically Ghanaian in its use of cocoyam leaves rather than any ingredient available outside the forest zone. Palm oil is the fat of the Ghanaian kitchen in the way that olive oil is the fat of the Mediterranean kitchen — not a cooking oil but a flavour, its specific fruity, slightly funky richness inseparable from the character of the soups and stews it colours orange-red.

Fufu, Banku, Kenkey: The Starches That Structure the Meal

The choice of starch in Ghana is a regional and ethnic marker as much as a culinary preference, and understanding the three main fermented starch preparations is understanding the geography of the country’s food culture. Fufu — made from a combination of boiled cassava and unripe plantain, pounded together in a mortar until completely smooth and elastic — is the starch of the Akan peoples of the forest zone and the most labour-intensive preparation: the pounding of fufu requires two people working in rhythm, one pounding with a large wooden pestle and the other turning the dough in the mortar between strokes, a physical process that takes 20 to 30 minutes and produces a dough of a texture — smooth, slightly sticky, elastic enough to stretch without breaking — that cannot be achieved by any other method. Fufu is eaten without utensils, by pinching off small pieces with the right hand and forming them into a scoop for the soup. Banku — made from fermented corn and cassava dough, cooked over heat while being stirred vigorously with a wooden spoon until it becomes smooth and stiff, served as a smooth mound — is the starch of the Ewe and Ga peoples of the coastal and Volta regions, its slightly sour fermentation flavour a counterpoint to the rich soups it accompanies. Kenkey (donkonu in Akan) is the most specifically Ghanaian starch internationally: fermented corn dough wrapped in corn husks or dried banana leaves and steamed until firm, eaten cold or at room temperature with fried fish and shito and a tomato-onion salsa. Kenkey with fried tilapia and shito is the street food combination of the Ga people of Accra — eaten at the roadside stalls that have been providing this combination since before independence — and it is the most immediate and most flavour-complex expression of the Ghanaian coastal food tradition available for under two cedis.

Kelewele, Waakye, and the Street Food That Accra Runs On

Kelewele is the evening street food of Accra and the preparation that most directly expresses the Ghanaian kitchen’s relationship with the ripe plantain that the forest zone produces in abundance: ripe plantains cut into cubes, marinated in a mixture of ground ginger, ground dried chilli, cloves, and salt, then deep-fried until the outside is caramelised and crispy and the inside is soft and sweet and slightly smoky from the Maillard reaction. The combination of the natural sweetness of the very ripe plantain with the warmth of the ginger and the heat of the chilli is one of those flavour combinations that makes complete intuitive sense once experienced and that no other culinary tradition has produced in quite this form. Kelewele is sold from the carts and stands of the Accra streets from about 5pm onward, when the day’s heat is breaking and the city is beginning its evening, and eating it from the paper bag with groundnuts sprinkled on top is the Accra street food experience that most rewards the willingness to eat while walking. Waakye is the other street food institution — rice and black-eyed peas cooked together with dried sorghum leaves (which give the dish its characteristic dark burgundy-brown colour), served with the extraordinary range of accompaniments (spaghetti, fried plantain, fried egg, fish or meat, shito, gari — the toasted cassava flour — and a light tomato-and-onion stew) that make waakye the most complex and most nutritionally complete street food in Ghana. The waakye vendors who operate from dawn until mid-morning are the early risers of Accra’s food culture, and finding a good waakye spot — identifiable by the queue that forms before the breakfast hour — is the food task that most rewards asking a Ghanaian where they would go.

Shito, Kontomire, and the Condiments That Complete the Table

Shito — Ghana’s black pepper sauce — is the condiment that most specifically identifies Ghanaian food from the rest of West Africa and that has no real equivalent in any other cuisine. Made from dried red or black chillies, dried herrings or prawns, shrimp paste, tomatoes, onion, ginger, and garlic, all fried together in oil at low heat for a very long time (thirty minutes to an hour, until the ingredients have broken down entirely and the oil has turned deep red-black from the dried fish and the chilli), shito is simultaneously a condiment, a flavouring ingredient, and a preservation — it keeps for weeks at room temperature because the long frying in oil effectively sterilises the mixture, and Ghanaian households make large batches that are stored in jars and spooned onto everything from rice to bread to kenkey to the kelewele. The flavour of shito is the flavour of the Ghanaian table in a single spoonful: the fish, the chilli, the umami of the dried seafood, the slight sweetness of the tomato, all concentrated by the long cooking into something that is simultaneously intense and remarkably balanced. Sobolo — the deep crimson drink made from dried hibiscus flowers (roselle), ginger, and spices, steeped in water and served cold — is the Ghanaian drink that has the most immediate international appeal: floral, tart, slightly sweet, refreshing in the tropical heat, and available from the cold box vendors at every market and roadside in Ghana. It is the drink of the north originally (where the roselle plant grows most prolifically) but has become the national cold drink of Ghana, and it is one of the most naturally beautiful beverages in colour and flavour that West Africa produces.

Ghanaian food is the food of a country that has been feeding its population with what its three ecological zones provide for centuries, and the sophistication of the preparations — the patient grinding and fermenting and pounding and slow-simmering — reflects a culinary tradition that took the groundnut and the plantain and the palm oil and the yam and built from them a table of considerable depth and variety. It is not the food culture that international food media writes about most, and it is not the food culture that international restaurants replicate most faithfully — the fermented starches and the dried fish bases and the palm oil require specific ingredients and specific techniques that the diaspora restaurant kitchen simplifies or substitutes. To eat it in full, go to Ghana. Find the waakye stall before 9am. Eat the groundnut soup with fufu in the evening at a chop bar in Kumasi. Put shito on everything. The food is better than its international profile suggests, which is the most reliable sign that the profile is still catching up to the reality.