Waakye (pronounced "waa-chay") is one of Ghana's most iconic street foods — a simple combination of rice and beans cooked together with dried sorghum leaves that turn the rice a distinctive reddish-purple color. This ancient coloring technique, unique to Ghanaian cooking, gives waakye its immediately recognizable appearance and a very subtle earthy flavor from the sorghum leaves.

What makes waakye a complete meal is the elaborate array of accompaniments: it is typically served with stewed tomatoes and onions (shito), hard-boiled egg, spaghetti, fried plantain, avocado, and sometimes fried or boiled fish. The combination of all these elements on a single plate — rice, beans, pasta, plantain, egg, sauce — represents the complete Ghanaian street food experience.

Waakye is sold from early morning onwards by vendors who set up large pots on street corners. By mid-morning, the best sellers have often sold out. It is a quintessentially democratic food — eaten by everyone from students to businesspeople — and buying waakye from a street vendor is a daily ritual for millions of Ghanaians.