Ghana: Red Red [vegan]

This week on our vegan world tour, we return to West Africa and cook a vegan Ghanaian recipe for Red Red. Read on to learn a bit about Ghana’s cuisine or jump straight to the recipe.

Ghana is located in West Africa on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea and is home to 30 million people. Fun fact: it is the country closest to “the center of the Earth”, where the equator and the Prime Meridian meet at GPS coordinates 0°00’00.0″N 0°00’00.0″E.

Ghanaian cuisine

In Ghana, a meal usually consists of a starch and a stew or soup ​[1], [2]​. Popular starches are corn, yams, plantain, and rice while popular protein sources are beans and seafood (in the south) or meat (in the north). Popular vegetables are tomato, eggplant, and onion. Spices don’t seem to be common but include peppers in general, scotch bonnet in particular, garlic, and ginger. While fish and meat is popular, there is a large amount of interesting largely Ghanaian vegan recipes and beans are important.

You will find classic West African dishes, like jollof rice (one-pot rice dish with vegetables), maafe (groundnut stew, similar to Gambian domoda), palm nut soup, and fufu (stretchy balls made from cassava and plantain which are cooked and mashed with water, served as a starch together with soup or sauce ​[3]​) ​[1], [4]–[6]​.

Other popular Ghanaian dishes include banku (a fermented corn flour, boiled with water and shaped into firm balls), waakye (a one-pot rice and beans dish cooked with sorghum or millet leaves), kelewele (spiced, fried plantain), and garden egg stew (an eggplant stew often served with boiled yam or plantain) ​[1], [3]–[6]​.

Vegan Red Red

For our visit to Ghana, I decided to cook Red Red, a stew based on black-eyed peas, tomatoes, and red palm oil. The dish gets a red colour from the palm oil and tomatoes and is served with fried plantains, which get an orange-red colour, giving the dish its peculiar name (red sauce and red plantain) ​[7]​. Or maybe the name comes from the red palm oil and the red tomatoes ​[8]​. Sometimes Red Red contains fish or other sea”food” ​[8]​ but often it is served completely vegan, as in this vegan Ghanaian recipe ​[9], [10]​.

Red palm oil

Red palm oil is an important staple in West African cooking, giving many stews and soups a distinct flavor ​​[11]​. The red palm oil is cold-pressed from the palm oil fruit and gets its red color from high levels of carotene, the same pigment which colors carrots and (some) sweet potatoes ​​[12]​. The oil is ~50% saturated fats (the type of fat that is often considered bad and is solid at room temperature) and is not to be confused with the colorless, refined palm oil pressed from the fruit’s seed. This refined palm oil is very high in saturated fats, solid at room temperature, and is often used in food production to control a food item’s texture. The smell and taste of red palm oil seems very familiar but is hard to place.

Conclusion

Overall, Red Red is a simple dish that is very easy to make. The taste of the stew itself is quite simple and the plantain elevates it, by adding slighlty acidid, creamy sweetness as a very welcome addition. If you make this dish, be sure to find some plantains to go with it.

I hope you enjoyed this vegan Ghanaian recipe. Did you try making Red Red? What dish would you have picked for Ghana? Leave a comment below.

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Red Red

This Ghanian vegan stew gets its interesting name from red palm oil and tomatoes, or possibly orange-red plantains taht are served alongside it. Be sure to eat it with fried plantain, as this really elevates the dish.

Course dinner

Cuisine Ghania, West Africa

Keyword beans, plantain, read palm oil

Servings 4

Author Henrik Persson | veganphysicist.com

Ingredients

• 1 red onion, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 scotch bonnet optional, can sub for chili flakes
• 3 cm ginger, grated
• 100 mL red palm oil
• 600 mL black eyed peas, cooked 1 cup dried beans, cooked
• 5 tomatoes, chopped
• 2 tbsp tomato puré
• salt
• 3 plantains
• 2 tbsp canola oil for plantain

Instructions

• Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Add the red onion and let it sweat until translucent.
• Add garlic and ginger and cook for a minute.
• Add tomato pure, chopped tomatoes and a pinch of salt.
• If using scotch bonnet, either slice itopen and add to the pot or add whole, depending on desired level of heat.
• Cook for 10 min until tomatoes start to break down.
• Add the beans and cook for another 30 minutes, until the oil starts to separate.

Plantain

• While the Red Red is cooking, peall and slice the plantains at a diagonal.
• Heat the canola oil in a frying pan. Fry the sliced plantains for a few minutes per side, until golden. Don't crowd the pan, fry in multiple rounds if necessary.