Ghanaian cuisine

Ghanaian style cooked Chicken and Rice, in Ghana

Ghanaian cuisine has been influenced by many factors in the past, and the components of Ghanaian cuisine increased from vegetables during and after colonial times. Among those products: tomato paste, ready-made soup cubes and powdered milk.

Food in Ghana

Ghana is famous for its big dishes, which include filling ingredients such as rice, fufu, bulgur, potatoes, kinky, and cooking bananas, which are usually served with sauce. Fish is also frequently eaten near the coast or near the Volta Sea, as it is less expensive in those areas. As for beef, it is eaten less due to its high price, but poultry and chicken meat are eaten in particular.

Because of the heat of the weather and the speed of meat deterioration, almost every home carries out the slaughtering process itself, as well as the cooks doing the slaughtering themselves to ensure that the meat is fresh. Pork is rare in Ghanaian cuisine due to the large number of Muslims, and they do not eat pork.

Vegetables are not the main part of Ghanaian cuisine, and salads are sometimes served in restaurants. Among the common vegetables are tomatoes, onions, tomatoes, tomato paste, and eggplant, and fruits of all kinds abound, such as mangoes and pineapples.

Cooking

Preparing meals usually begins with browning onions in vegetable oil and adding tomato paste, then vegetables are added and poured into tomato sauce.

Milk, cream, or cheese is rarely included in cooked food in Ghana. In large cities, where there are supermarkets and refrigerators, you can buy yogurt and dairy products, but at high prices.

Eating habits

Food habits in Ghana differ between city dwellers and village dwellers. A Ghanaian usually doesn't care about breakfast. Potatoes and manioc roots are eaten in the south, while in the arid north, cereals, corn and rice are often eaten. While meat is eaten in the north, fish are eaten more around the Volta Sea and near the coast in the south.

In Ghana, people eat with their hands and use the right hand to eat while not using the left hand to eat. Forks and knives are not used except in some restaurants, where tourists and visitors eat, as well as in some upper-class homes.

Bread is not included in the basics of Ghanaian cuisine, but it is sometimes replaced by breakfast with types of bread that includes milk and is eaten with tea.

Food is usually eaten with chili, as is the case in hot countries, and there are about ten types of pepper and chili in Ghana. There are also some sauces made from peppers alone, such as the pepper soup called fufu.

Pineapple and papaya are eaten as a dessert after eating, mangoes and other fruits. People like to eat roasted peanuts from time to time, which is sometimes prepared in the form of peanut butter.

Some foods

• jari which is manioc flour, is fried in oil, then sprinkled on some foods, or boiled in water, and a kind of puree is prepared from it, (such as potato puree).
• Kilawili which are slices of ripe banana fried in oil and flavored with pepper and salt.
• Radu rad banana slices of ripe bananas sautéed in walnut oil and served with bean sauce.
• Jambayala is a fish soup with rice, tomatoes and onions.