fufu — Ghana

Fufu is a staple starch dish found across sub-Saharan Africa, especially West Africa, made by boiling starchy roots or bananas until soft and then pounding them into a smooth, elastic paste, its texture ranging from firm to soft depending on the eater's preference. In Ghana, fufu is most commonly reported as a mixture of cassava with plantain or cocoyam, pounded together in a large wooden mortar with a long pestle, commonly by two people working in a steady rhythm, one turning the mass between strikes. The cassava and plantain or cocoyam are peeled, boiled separately until tender, then combined in the mortar and pounded with repeated strikes and folds until the mixture turns into a single, lump-free, stretchy ball. It is shaped into smaller mounds and served warm in a bowl, always alongside a soup, never on its own. What is reported to set the Ghanaian version apart from fufu made elsewhere in the region is mainly the base starch used, cassava with plantain or cocoyam here, against cassava with cassava flour, yam, or maize elsewhere, and the soup it is paired with, commonly light soup, palm nut soup or groundnut soup, without any of these combinations being treated as more central than another.