Waakye Recipe
A fantastic Ghanaian favourite made from black-eyed peas/beans, rice and sorghum leaves
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 400 grams rice
- 400 grams black-eyed peas
- 5 sorghum leaves
- salt
- 1.6 litres water approximately
Instructions
- Boil water and soak sorghum leaves in it for about 20 minutes.
- Rinse black-eyed peas, and put them in a large pot. Add water from sorghum leaves and cook for about 25 minutes or until black-eyed peas are almost cooked. They should resist slightly when you try to squeeze them between your fingers. See note 1.
- Rinse the rice and add to the pot with some salt to taste.
- Once the water has almost evaporated, turn down the heat to very low and cover with aluminium foil and a lid.
- Carefully stir, once or twice to ensure that the rice is uniformly mixed with the black-eyed peas.
- Remove from heat once the rice grains are cooked.
- Serve hot with waakye stew and all the trimmings (spaghetti, gari, salad, shito, a boiled egg, etc.)
Video
Notes
- You can also add some of the sorghum leaves to your beans while they cook, This will give your end resulting waakye a deeper purple colour.
- Your cook time for the black-eyed peas will vary greatly, depending on how dry the black-eyed peas are, the type of peas, or whether they have been soaked overnight. Cook them for about 30 minutes and then squash them between your fingers to see if they are soft. They should resist slightly as they will still cook when the rice is added.
- About a quarter of a teaspoon of baking powder or a small piece of kawe/kanwe (saltpetre) can speed up the cooking process for the black eyed-peas.
- For this recipe, a ratio of 1 part black-eyed peas to 1 part of rice to 4 parts of water was used.