Ghana: A study in lunch starches.

For those of you who have never had Ghanian cuisine (and I'm sure there are many of you) there are three main things you should know about Ghanian cuisine:

1. It is mostly starch (rice/plantain/cassava/maize/yam etc)
2. The portions are large enough to feed a small army
3. I don’t love it

The main component of Ghanaian dishes is the starch, and there are not many vegetables. Starch usually makes up more than 70% of the meal and often is the name of the dish, even though there are other components. The starch is either made of rice, pounded cassava, plantain, pounded maize, yams or a combination of all/some of those.

The other 30% of the dish is protein (fish, goat, bushmeat, chicken, crabs and sometimes, beans) and a soup or gravy. This is usually tomato based and pretty spicy. As Accra is on the coast, fish is pretty common. When you order it they ask if you want the head (front half of the fish) or the tail (back half). I mostly stay away from the other animal proteins, they don’t discriminate when giving you pieces and often they are more skin/fat/bone than actual meat. Most Ghanaians mix all the proteins together in the soup (meat and fish together).

You usually eat with your hands, a difficult task considering most of the meals include hot soup. The idea is that you take a small piece of the starch (usually a doughy consistency) and use it to scoop up the soup. This seems to work for most of the locals but I need more practice. I just end up just eating more starch than soup.

Below are some photos of the dishes I have eaten here.















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