Waakye is a Ghanaian dish comprised of rice and beans cooked together in one. This resembles the Caribbean rice and peas except that waakye is cooked with dried millet leaves which give the dish a reddish hue. It is commonly served with fried fish, boiled eggs and shito, and is so delicious! I love how filling and hearty it is, but most importantly, it makes a large serving. So once I cook this, I’m basically sorted for the whole week.
What ingredients do I need?
I usually stick to black eyed beans because it is the traditional choice. The most important thing here is to prep your beans beforehand by soaking it overnight. This reduces the cooking time in half so that you don’t spend hours boiling beans. It is so tedious and exhausting waiting for beans to soften up I think.
Another key thing here is to use dried millet (sorghum) leaves, which are also commonly called “waakye leaves“. They are essential to getting the reddish color in your waakye and give it a bit of depth in flavor. They are also packed with antioxidant properties so don’t sleep on this ingredient.
For the rice options, you can use either brown or white rice. In this recipe, I used brown rice because I’ve actually stopped buying white rice for health reasons.
How long does this take?
I would say be prepared to spend close to two hours in the kitchen making this. I consider it a labor of love kind of deal just like any authentic, traditional cuisine. You boil the beans with salt and water first till it is semi-soft and then add the rice to it along with the millet leaves. I wanted more flavor to my waakye so I actually added broth in addition to the water when boiling the beans to make it tastier. Once the rice is cooked, the waakye is ready. The beans will be perfect too because they have been boiled beforehand so they taste great.
I highly recommend serving this with my kelewele recipe, enjoy!
Ingredients
1 cup black eyed beans
1 tablespoon table salt
2&1/2 cups broth (vegetable/beef/chicken)
3&1/2 cups water, plus extra to soak beans
2 cups long-grain rice
10 dried millet leaves (waakye leaves)
Instructions
- Soak the beans in water overnight.
- Drain the water and boil the beans with the salt, broth along with 1 cup of water in a saucepan. Cover the saucepan with its lid and boil on medium-high heat for 1 hour. Do not turn off the heat.
- Rinse the rice and add it to the boiling beans pot along with 2&1/2 cups of water, and the millet leaves.
- Cook covered for 15 minutes, stir, and lower the heat. Continue cooking, covered, for another 25-30 minutes until the rice is soft.
- Stir the rice from time to time so that it doesn't burn.
- Once the rice is soft, take out the millet leaves and serve warm.
- Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to a week.