Waakye is a Ghanaian dish of cooked rice and beans, commonly eaten for breakfast or lunch. However, others prefer to eat it for supper. The rice and beans, usually black-eyed peas or cow beans, are cooked together, with red dried sorghum leaf sheaths or stalks and limestone.
The sorghum leaves and limestone give the dish its characteristic flavor and a red appearance, and the sorghum is taken out before consumption. In this post, I will walk you through the steps to prepare one of the most widely-eaten Ghanaian food, Waakye. But before then, I would like us to know a detailed history about why Ghanaian call this local rice and beans Waakye.
About Ghanaian Waakye & Stew
The word waakye is from the Hausa language, which means rice and beans. The origin of Waakye is from the name “shinkafa da wake,” which means rice and beans.
It is believed that the Hausa and the Northern ethnic groups of Ghana are the best cooks of waakye. In Ghana, waakye is one popular food that no one wants to miss. You can cook waakye in your home by following the recipes in this post, or you can also buy from vendors across the country.
In Ghana, food vendors mostly wrapped the waakye in banana leaf. And it usually goes with one or more of “Wele,” stew, boiled eggs, garri, shito, vegetable salad, spaghetti (called talia in Ghana) or fried plantain, onions and tomatoes.
You May Need This to Prepare The Ghanaian Waakye
- Rice: 2 cups of white rice of your choice
- Beans: We usually use raw black eye peas. These are the indigenous bean variety in West Africa, and you’ll get some in any grocery store.
- Baking Soda/Salt Petre (Potassium Nitrate): Baking soda or Salt Petre is essential in this recipe. It makes the beans cook faster and softer. It also darkens the rice.
- Sorghum Stalk: The red sorghum variety that grows in Northern Ghana is full of antioxidants. When beans and rice are cooked, you get a lovely bowl of red rice and beans. Sorghum stalks are found in Ghanaian grocery stores, but it is not required. As mentioned above, traditionally, waakye is not made with sorghum stems; however, please use the sorghum stalks if you can. It adds a lot of nutrients.
How To Make Waakye
Follow the steps below to make a mouthwatering Ghanaian Waakye from home. We will use both the baking soda and Sorghum stems to prepare the waakye in this method:
How To Prepare Waakye With Baking Soda
- Soak the beans overnight to shorten the cooking time.
- The next day, wash the beans very well with clean water.
- Boil in a lot of water and double the baking soda used with sorghum stems.
- When the beans are partly cooked, add in the rice, more baking soda, a measured salt and cook till the rice is tender.
Waakye Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup dry of black-eyed peas
- 2 cups dry of white rice
- 6 1/4 cups of water to cook the beans and rice
- A pinch of salt
- 1 tsp baking soda (if you are not using the stems, it will be about 1 tbsp)
- 6 sorghum stems
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
Instructions
- Soak the beans overnight.
- The next day, wash and drain the beans.
- Cook the beans with the sorghum stems at medium-low in a large pot with 4 cups of water. If you are not using the stems, you can cook the beans in water
- Make sure to leave a gap when closing the pot so that the water does not boil over onto the stoves.
- After about 10 minutes, add the baking soda. if you are not using the stems, add about 1 tbsp of baking soda
- Let the beans cook for another 10 minutes. At this point, add in your rice, the rest of the water (2 1/4 cups) and mix evenly
- Let the pot come to a boiling point.
- Once it has come to a boil, turn the heat to low, cover the pot with aluminium foil and let it cook at low heat for about 30 minutes
- After the 30 minutes has passed, check on the waakye to see how well the rice has cooked. Add in some coconut oil if you like, and then cover the pot till the rice is done. It should take another 15-20 minutes.
