- Country of origin
- Ghana
- Category
- Main Course
- Difficulty
- ●○○ Easy
A rice-and-beans dish with cousins on several continents
Cooking rice and beans together in one pot, then building a meal around whatever sauces and toppings are on hand, is a pattern that recurs across food cultures with no direct connection to each other: Louisiana’s red beans and rice, the Caribbean’s rice and peas, Brazil’s arroz com feijão. Waakye belongs to that same family of one-pot, protein-and-starch staples, but its defining feature — the reddish-brown colour from sorghum leaves rather than tomato or achiote — has no real equivalent among them.
The toppings built up around it (shito chili sauce, boiled egg, avocado, fried spaghetti) turn a simple base into what’s closer to a full plate than a side dish, a layering also common across West African “rice bowl” street food more broadly.
History
The name and preparation of waakye trace back to Hausa and Dagomba culinary traditions from northern Ghana, along with broader influences from the West African Sahel, where rice-and-beans combinations are common staple foods. The dish gradually spread south to become one of the most widely eaten everyday meals in Ghana, sold by street vendors from breakfast through dinner, making it a genuinely unifying dish across regions despite its specifically northern origins.
The most striking and, for the uninitiated, puzzling feature is its red-brown color, achieved not through a spice or tomato but by cooking the rice and beans with dried sorghum stalk leaves (or, in a faster modern version, a bit of baking soda), a technique that also slightly affects the texture, and one that has become such a central visual signature that waakye without its characteristic color wouldn’t be recognized as authentic by many Ghanaians.
Ingredients — for 4 people
- 250g rice, 150g black-eyed peas, soaked
- Dried sorghum stalk leaves (or baking soda as a shortcut)
- 1 onion, salt
- To serve: spicy tomato sauce (shito), hard-boiled egg, avocado, fried spaghetti
Step-by-step waakye recipe
- Soak the black-eyed peas several hours ahead, then drain.
- Boil the beans with the sorghum leaves (or a pinch of baking soda) until they start to soften.
- Add the rinsed rice directly into the same colored cooking water.
- Cover and cook until the water is fully absorbed and both rice and beans are cooked through.
- Remove the sorghum leaves before serving, fluff the rice with a fork.
- Serve with shito sauce, hard-boiled egg, avocado, and other toppings of your choice.
Cooking method
Technique: rice and beans cooked together in the same water tinted by sorghum leaves, which flavor and color simultaneously.
Traditional equipment: a large aluminum pot set over a wood fire at Ghanaian street stalls.
Landmark to watch: watch the water level closely — the rice should finish cooking right as the water is absorbed, without excess that would make it mushy.
Nutrition, per serving
Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, including the egg and avocado toppings, divided across four servings.
Seven grams of fibre per serving — unusually high for a rice dish — comes from the black-eyed peas, the same pulse family behind the fibre figures seen elsewhere on this atlas in white beans and lentils. Protein at 17 g is solid for a plate built mostly from rice and beans, before the egg and any extra topping are added.
Economic context
Rice and black-eyed peas are both cheap, storable staples across Ghana, which is exactly why waakye works as a street food sold from breakfast through dinner — a base that costs little, topped with whatever a vendor can add that day, from a boiled egg to fried plantain. It’s the toppings, not the rice-and-beans base, that let a customer scale the price of a plate up or down.
Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. This figure describes the cost of a healthy diet in Ghana generally — it is not a costing of this specific recipe.
Who this dish suits
Fits well with
- High-fibre eating patterns — 7 g per serving from the beans
- Budget-conscious, filling everyday meals
- Customisable plates — toppings can be added or left off freely
Worth knowing
- 83 g carbohydrate per serving — a substantial, energy-dense base
- Contains egg (topping) and gluten (fried spaghetti topping) — relevant for allergen checks
- Fibre from black-eyed peas can cause discomfort for those unaccustomed to pulses
Go further
We wrote up the fuller story behind waakye: how a dish that started with Hausa and Dagomba communities in northern Ghana ended up sold on every corner from breakfast to dinner, and the historical debate over its ties to rice-and-beans dishes across the Atlantic.
What about you?
In your opinion, what’s the best place or restaurant to enjoy great waakye?