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.