Kelewele: Ghana's Spicy Fried Plantain

It is evening in Accra. The heat of the day is fading, the streets are busy with people heading home, and along the roadside, small fires and lanterns begin to glow. Beside a blackened pan of hot oil, a woman stirs cubes of golden plantain. The air fills with a smell that every Ghanaian knows: sweet, caramelised fruit, sharp ginger, hot chilli and fragrant spice. A customer buys a portion wrapped in newspaper or a small paper bag, with a handful of roasted groundnuts on the side. This is kelewele, Ghana's best-loved street snack.

What is kelewele?

Kelewele (pronounced keh-leh-WEH-leh) is made from ripe plantain, cut into cubes or chunks, seasoned with a spicy mixture and deep-fried until crisp and caramelised at the edges, soft inside.

The key is the spice mix. Recipes vary, but typically include:

• Fresh ginger, grated or pounded.
• Hot chilli pepper or cayenne.
• Onion and sometimes garlic.
• Salt.
• Sometimes cloves, nutmeg, anise or African spices such as grains of paradise or hwentia (Selim pepper).

The plantain is tossed in the spices and left to soak up the flavour before frying.

The plantain

Plantain is a member of the banana family, but it is starchier, firmer and usually cooked rather than eaten raw. It is a staple food in much of West and Central Africa, eaten at every stage of ripeness:

• Green (unripe) plantain is starchy and is boiled, pounded into fufu or fried into crisp chips.
• Yellow (ripe) plantain is sweeter and is fried, boiled or roasted.
• Black (very ripe) plantain is very sweet and is used for dishes such as kelewele or the spiced fritters called tatale.

Bananas and plantains originally came from Southeast Asia and arrived in Africa long ago, possibly more than 2,000 years ago, perhaps via the Indian Ocean. They spread across the continent and became central to farming and diets, especially in the humid forest zones.

An evening tradition

Kelewele is traditionally an evening food. In Ghana, many street foods have their own time of day: koko (porridge) and koose in the morning, waakye (rice and beans) at lunchtime, and kelewele at night. Sellers set up at roadsides, outside bars, at bus stations and near busy junctions, frying fresh batches as customers arrive.

It is often eaten with roasted groundnuts (peanuts), which balance the sweet, spicy plantain. It can also be served as a side dish with red-red (bean stew cooked with palm oil), with jollof rice or with grilled meat or fish. Ghana's version of jollof rice, and its rivalry with Nigeria's, is a story we told in our article on jollof rice.

Similar dishes

Fried plantain is loved across West Africa and its diaspora:

• In Nigeria, fried ripe plantain is called dodo, usually without the spice mix.
• In Côte d'Ivoire and other French-speaking countries, it is alloco, often sold with grilled fish or a spicy sauce.
• In Cameroon, fried plantain is eaten with beans or spicy fish.
• In the Caribbean and Latin America, fried plantains are called maduros or, when green and twice-fried, tostones.

What makes kelewele distinctive is the ginger and chilli marinade.

How to make kelewele

1. Choose ripe plantains: yellow with black spots, or mostly black. They should be sweet but still firm.
2. Peel and cut them into cubes or diagonal slices.
3. Prepare the spice paste: blend or pound ginger, chilli, onion, salt and any other spices with a little water.
4. Toss the plantain in the spice paste and leave for 15 to 30 minutes.
5. Fry in hot oil until deep golden brown and slightly crisp at the edges.
6. Drain on paper and serve hot, with roasted peanuts.

Why it matters

Kelewele is a simple dish, but it holds a lot of Ghanaian life: the evening rhythm of the streets, the women who run food businesses at the roadside, the love of bold flavours, and a fruit that travelled across oceans long ago to become an African staple. For many Ghanaians abroad, the smell of ginger and frying plantain is the smell of home.

Further reading

• Fran Osseo-Asare, Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa (Greenwood Press, 2005)
• Barbara Baëta and Fran Osseo-Asare, The Ghana Cookbook (Hippocrene Books, 2015)
• International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) — Banana and plantain