Waakye — breakfast, built like a feast
Rice and beans cooked with sorghum leaves, then loaded with everything the counter has to offer.
Written by The Kitchen
There is a moment, somewhere around seven in the morning in Accra, when the whole street smells of the same thing. Sorghum leaves, soaked overnight, going into a pot with rice and beans. That smell is waakye, and for a great many Ghanaians it is not a dish so much as a starting gun.
Why the leaves matter
The name comes from the Hausa shinkafa da wake, rice and beans, worn down over generations into the single word we use today. What makes it waakye and not simply rice and beans is the sorghum: dried red leaves steeped in the cooking water, staining every grain a deep, earthy maroon and lending that faintly bitter, tea-like note that sits underneath everything else.
We cook ours the long way. The beans go on first, until they give, and only then does the rice join them, so both finish at the same time instead of one turning to paste while the other stays chalky.
It is really a build, not a recipe
Ask ten people what goes on waakye and you will get ten different answers, all of them correct. The plate is an assembly line and you are the foreman.
- Spaghetti, a legacy of a different era, and non-negotiable for plenty of people
- Boiled egg, halved, yolk just set
- Fried plantain, sweet against the savoury rice
- Gari, dry and toasted, for texture
- Shito, our black pepper sauce, made in the kitchen in small batches
- Beef, goat or fish stew, spooned over the top
- Wele, soft and chewy
- leaves, which is our local term for salad
The pleasure of it is that no two plates come out the same. You build the one you want.
Eating it properly
Waakye is a morning dish and a morning dish only, though nobody will stop you at noon. Eat it hot, mix it as you go rather than stirring the whole plate into a uniform mash, and do not be shy with the shito. If you have never had it, order it once plain so you can taste the sorghum underneath, then order it again with everything.
Ours travels in a 3L pack, which is enough for two hungry people or one person who has plans for the leftovers.
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