There is fried plantain, cooked plantain, and grilled plantain. Then there is Kelewele. Kelewele is a fantastic Ghanaian snack made from ripe plantains which are spiced and then deep-fried. The plantains used for Kelewele are usually quite ripe but not overly soft as they would lose all structure and just clump together. Kelewele is often eaten with roasted groundnuts (peanuts) and is a Ghanaian all-time favourite.
Kelewele is very popular and especially at night, you will find food vendors selling them along the streets. With regards to taste, it is a beautiful blend of sweet and spicy just like Ofam. If you are a fan of sweet, salty, and spicy combinations then this one will hit all the right spots. Kelewele is also great with Jollof, Gari Foto or this Pink Rice.
Plantains form a big part of Ghanaian, West African food culture so you will find different recipes using plantains. Outside of Africa, many other cultures also use plantains in their cooking from South America to the Caribbean.
Ingredients
The ingredients for Kelelwele are quite simple and should be easy to get. Apart from beautifully riped plantains, you will also need anise seeds (or anise seed powder), ginger, onions, red chilli pepper powder, and Grains of Selim, and some salt. Different recipes may either add others such as garlic or cloves but as a standard, the ingredients listed will be sufficient and give you good results.
Instructions
The steps for making Kelewele are simple. Mix all the spices together, cut your plantains into small diagonal pieces and then mix the spices with the plantain and leave for about 30 minutes. I find that leaving the spices to do their thing for a few minutes results in better tasting Kelewele.
Once you start deep frying, you want to do that in small batches. This ensures that the pan you are using is not crowded and each of the pieces has enough space to move about. When the plantains are very ripe and very soft, the likelihood that they'll bunch together is much higher and so this is something to watch out for.
Variations
- Non-Spicy - If you don't like peppery food, you can opt to leave out the pepper powder when mixing the spices together.
- Dry Spice Blend - You can also opt to use only dry ingredients (onion powder, ginger powder etc) to make your spice blend for the Kelewele.
Tip
Look for plantains that are ripe but not too hard or too soft. Too hard and they're not as tasty and too soft and they end up soaking up too much oil.
Kelewele Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 plantains
- 2 tablespoons ginger blended or grated, heaped
- 2 tablespoons onions blended
- 1 tablespoon anise seed powder
- salt
- 1 tablespoon red chilli pepper powder heaped
- 2 grains of Selim crushed
- vegetable oil for frying
Instructions
- Remove peels from plantains.
- Cut plantain lengthwise into two and then cut each of the halves into diagonals.
- Mix anise seed powder, salt, ginger, onions, chilli powder.
- Mix the plantains with the spice mixture and leave for about 30 minutes.
- Over medium heat, fry the plantains in small batches, so as not to overcrowd the pan. See notes.
- Each batch should take about 4-7 minutes.
- Drain the kelewele and serve hot with groundnuts (peanuts)
Notes
- There is a tendency for the spices to burn if the heat is too high. You also do not want to start off with low heat as all of the spices will end up falling into the oil. Start with a medium to high heat and then turn down about 2-3 minutes in.
- If you are using very coarse sea salt and you are worried that it won't all dissolve before you start frying the plantains, you can dissolve the salt in some water and then add that to the plantains.
Ridwanat says
You make me remember home, am an halfcast Nigeria Ghana. I will this again
Edinam says
Let me know how it goes when you try it.
Tea says
Hi,
This sounds great, but 'grains of selim' is unfortunately not something I can get. Should i still consider this recipe, or is it more of a deal-breaker, if its flavor is very important?
I've been looking through your site for ripe plantain recipes, which are all new to me, and a few caught my eye. In particular your recipe for ofam sounds like a great safety-net for 'oops, I've left them out for too long'-plantains. But I'm a bit spooked about the palm oil in it. Since I'm on my first ever bottle and I can't get another brand to compare, I don't know what it's supposed to taste like. (I've googled, didn't help much) My bottle is a Ghanaian brand called "Afroase"; are you familiar with it? Is it good oil? Because to me it does not smell or taste pleasantly. I'm unsure if palm oil is an acquired taste to non-Africans or if my batch is not great. I'd appreciate any insight.
Oh, and on that recipe, it just says "tablespoons palm oil" - no number of T's listed, so I think you might want to fix that :).
Edinam says
Hey there, the grains of Selim are not a deal breaker for the kelewele recipe. All the other ingredients listed will still make for authentic, Ghanaian style kelewele. Now on to Ofam - palm oil can be an acquired taste for many so it could well be that the smell and taste might be a bit foreign to you. Having said that, good palm oil will not an overly strong or unpleasant (rancid) taste or smell. I am not familiar with the Afroase brand - but too often, many bottled palm oil brands are not of the best quality. It is for this reason that the only palm oil I currently use (I am in Europe), is canned palm oil that I brought back with me from Ghana. What some people do (and I have seen that being done primarily by Nigerians), is to bleach the palm oil. It involves heating the palm oil at very high temperatures which is said to change the taste. Oh many thanks for the heads up on the tablespoons of palm oil omission- I have corrected it.