Must try in Ghana

Waakye.

Name: Waakye (Ghanaian Rice and Beans Cooked with Sorghum Leaves)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 1 h 10 min
Total time: 1 h 35 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Ghana
Ingredients: 250 g dried cowpeas (black-eyed peas), soaked overnight; 20 g dried sorghum leaf sheaths (waakye leaves), rinsed; ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda; 500 g long-grain rice, rinsed until the water runs clear; 2 tsp fine salt; 1.5 l water; 6 eggs, for boiling; 6 tbsp shito (Ghanaian black pepper sauce); 6 tbsp gari (coarse fermented cassava granules); 2 very ripe plantains, sliced and fried; 1 avocado, sliced

Ghanaian Rice and Beans Cooked with Sorghum Leaves

Waakye · say it: WAA-chay

Waakye is rice and beans, but the colour tells you it is not any rice and beans: the pot is cooked with dried red sorghum leaf sheaths, which bleed a russet dye into the grains and give the finished plate its reddish-brown look and a faint mineral edge. On its own the rice tastes gentle and slightly earthy, softly starchy from the cowpeas that cook into it. It is never served on its own. A waakye plate is built up in layers at the seller's table — a spoon of shito, a shower of gari, a boiled egg, spaghetti, fried plantain, stew, sometimes wele — so every forkful mixes something soft, something crunchy and something fiercely hot.

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Ghanaian Rice and Beans Cooked with Sorghum Leaves

Gate: GhanaGreater Accra
Prep: 15 min
Cook: 1 hr 10 min
Total time: 1 hr 35 min incl. 10 min rest
Serves: 6
Status: Medium
Nutrition / serving · estimated: Calories 470 kcal; Protein 16 g; Carbs 82 g; Fat 7 g; Fiber 9 g; Sodium 620 mg

Why this recipe works.

Uses the real sorghum leaves for colour and gives a workable substitute rather than pretending food colouring is equivalent.
Cooks the beans first and the rice in the same coloured liquid, so the grains take the dye all the way through instead of sitting on a stained bottom layer.
Gets the baking soda quantity right — enough to soften the cowpeas and deepen the colour, not enough to turn the pot slippery.
Treats the accompaniments as part of the recipe, because a plate of plain waakye rice is not the dish anyone in Ghana is thinking of.

Tips from our kitchen.

Soak the cowpeas overnight. Unsoaked beans need so much extra boiling that the rice added later turns to porridge before they are ready.
Rinse the dried sorghum leaves under the tap first. They are field-dried and usually carry dust and grit that will otherwise end up in the pot.
Add the baking soda with a light hand — a quarter teaspoon for this quantity. More gives a stronger red but leaves a soapy, slippery texture that is a common giveaway of a rushed pot.
Fish the leaves out before the rice goes in. Left in, they keep releasing tannin and the rice takes on a bitter tea note.
Judge the water for the rice against what is already in the pot, not against the packet instructions — the beans will have absorbed and released liquid, so measure what remains before topping up.
Boil the eggs while the rice steams and peel them warm; a waakye plate wants the egg soft-centred, not chalky.

Substitutions.

Dried sorghum leaf sheaths (waakye leaves) → A large handful of dried hibiscus (sorrel/bissap) petals, tied in muslin: Hibiscus gives a comparable red-brown dye with only a faint tartness, which is the closest honest swap. It is not identical — sorghum leaves are more earthy than sour — but it beats the alternative, which is a pot of pink food colouring.
Cowpeas (black-eyed peas) → Dried red kidney beans or pinto beans: Ghanaian cooks use cowpeas, but red beans appear often enough that nobody will call it wrong. Red beans need roughly 15 minutes longer, so start them earlier.
Wele (cow skin) → Extra boiled egg, fried plantain or avocado: Wele is boiled until gelatinous and is an acquired texture even in Ghana. Nothing about the plate suffers if you leave it out; the sellers assume some customers will.

Variations.

Waakye with talia: The standard Accra plate: a nest of plain boiled spaghetti laid over the rice before the stew goes on. It sounds like a mistake and works completely.
Waakye and fish: Fried tilapia or salted koobi in place of the egg, with more stew ladled over so the fish is not left dry.
Gari foto plate: Waakye served with gari foto — gari fried up with onion, tomato and egg — instead of loose dry gari, giving a softer, richer texture on the plate.

Storage & reheating.

Cooked waakye keeps 3 days refrigerated and reheats better than most rice: sprinkle over a tablespoon of water, cover, and steam it in a pan over low heat until it loosens. Keep the accompaniments separate — gari turns to paste and fried plantain goes leathery once they sit in the rice. It freezes in portions for a month, though the beans soften noticeably. Eggs should be boiled fresh on the day rather than stored peeled.

Serve with

Shito, a heap of gari, boiled eggs, fried ripe plantain, a tomato-based stew and salad — put all of it on the table and let people build their own plate.

The story behind Waakye.

The name comes from Hausa: shinkafa da wake, rice and beans, shortened over time to waakye. That origin points north, and the dish is generally understood to have travelled south with Hausa traders and migrants into the towns of southern Ghana, where it settled into the street-food economy of Accra and Kumasi and became something close to a national breakfast. The northern Ghanaian and wider Sahelian habit of cooking grains with sorghum leaves for colour came along with it.

What makes waakye particular is that it is barely a recipe and almost entirely an assembly. The rice itself is deliberately plain. Everything that gives the plate its character is added on top by the waakye seller, working from a row of basins: gari for grit, shito for heat and smoke, talia — boiled spaghetti, an accepted and much-loved part of the plate rather than a filler — a hard-boiled egg, avocado slices, salad, a ladle of tomato stew, and wele, boiled and softened cow skin, for the people who came for it. Regulars order by naming their combination, and no two plates on the same bench look the same.

It is also a dish measured by the clock. Waakye is morning food, wrapped in a leaf or a plastic sheet and eaten from about six in the morning; a well-known seller will be out of rice before lunchtime, and arriving late is a familiar Accra disappointment. Some vendors have been at the same corner for decades and are known by name across a whole neighbourhood. Making it at home is straightforward — the pot is easy — but a home cook has to do the sellers' other job as well, which is to put enough different things on the plate that the rice never eats the same way twice.

Questions, answered.

What are waakye leaves and do I really need them?

They are the dried leaf sheaths of red sorghum, sold in bundles at African and Caribbean grocers and online. They are what turns the rice red-brown and add a mild earthy note; without them you have plain rice and beans, which is a decent meal but not waakye. Dried hibiscus petals are the closest substitute if you cannot get the real thing.

Why does waakye sometimes taste soapy?

Too much baking soda. Ghanaian cooks add a small amount to soften the cowpeas and pull a deeper colour from the leaves, but past about a quarter teaspoon per half kilo of rice it leaves a slippery mouthfeel and a metallic aftertaste. If it has already happened, there is no rescue — the only fix is less next time.

Is waakye eaten for breakfast or lunch?

Both, but it starts as breakfast. Sellers set up early in the morning and popular ones sell out before midday, so in practice it is a morning and early-afternoon food. Ghanaians eat it at any hour they can get it, but a waakye seller still trading at six in the evening would be unusual.

Can I make waakye without soaking the beans overnight?

You can, but cook the beans separately and for much longer before the rice goes anywhere near the pot. Unsoaked cowpeas can take over an hour, and by the time they yield the rice would be sludge. A quick alternative is to boil unsoaked beans for two minutes, cover and leave them off the heat for an hour, then proceed.

What is the spaghetti doing on the plate?

It belongs there. Boiled plain spaghetti, called talia, has been a standard waakye accompaniment in Ghana for decades and is ordered as often as the egg. It soaks up stew and shito and adds a soft texture against the gari. Leaving it off is a choice, not the default.

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