Ghana's essential everyday soup — a thin, deeply flavoured tomato broth with goat, chicken or fish, whole scotch bonnets and tomatoes. Always served over fufu or with rice balls.
Light Soup (nkrakra in Twi, the dominant Akan language) is Ghana's most essential daily food — eaten for lunch and dinner, always alongside fufu (pounded cassava and plantain), banku (fermented corn dough) or rice balls. Despite the name, it is not light in flavour — it is intensely savoury, with a deep tomato and pepper base, the heat of whole scotch bonnets (sometimes left whole for presentation and pricked at the table to release heat to taste), and the rich stock of bone-in meat. The soup is deliberately watery in consistency — it is a broth meant to be drunk, not a thick sauce, and the fufu is swallowed whole in small balls after being rolled in the broth.
Serves 4
Rub meat with grated onion, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper. Rest 15 min.
Place seasoned meat in a pot with no water over medium heat. Allow it to cook in its own juices for 10 min, stirring occasionally — this is called 'cooking in its own water' and is a standard Ghanaian technique that concentrates flavour.
Add water, quartered tomatoes, whole scotch bonnets, quartered onion, tomato paste and stock cube. Bring to a boil then simmer 50–60 min until meat is very tender.
Taste and adjust salt. The soup should be thin, clear-ish and deeply red-orange. Serve over fufu, banku or rice balls in large deep bowls.
The whole scotch bonnets release heat gradually — more pricks in the pepper means more heat. Leave entirely whole for a milder result.
'Cooking in its own water' concentrates the meat's natural flavour before water is added — this is key to the soup's depth despite its thin consistency.
Light soup should be served very hot — it is drunk from the bowl between bites of fufu.
Fish version: use whole snapper or tilapia instead of meat — reduce cooking to 20 min
Abenkwan (palm nut soup): a richer, creamier version using palm nut cream instead of plain tomato base
Add kontomire (cocoyam leaves) or spinach for a green variation
Keeps 4 days refrigerated. Freezes well for 3 months. Reheat gently to avoid overcooking the meat further.
Light soup is documented across all Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana (Ashanti, Fante, Akuapem) and neighbouring regions of Ivory Coast. It is the foundational preparation of Ghanaian cooking — the template from which palm nut soup, groundnut soup and peanut soup all derive. The tradition of eating it with fufu is ancient, predating contact with Europeans.
Fufu is Ghana's staple starch — a smooth, elastic, starchy mass made by pounding boiled cassava and plantain (or yam) until completely smooth. It has almost no flavour of its own and serves as the vehicle for the soup. Small balls of fufu are rolled in the hand and dipped or submerged in the soup, then swallowed without chewing — the soup provides all the flavour. Ready-made fufu powder (from African grocery stores) can be rehydrated and kneaded as a quick alternative.
Per serving · 4 servings total
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