Africa

Wasawasa Recipe: Steamed Flour Granules from Northern Ghana

Name: Wasawasa Recipe: Steamed Flour Granules from Northern Ghana
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h 5 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Ghanaian
Ingredients: 160 g Cassava flour; 80 g Cornflour; 120 ml Lukewarm water; 1/2 tsp Salt; 1 tbsp Red palm oil or peanut oil; 1/2 (about 100 g) Onion; 1 (about 150 g) Tomato; 1 clove Garlic; 8 g Ginger; 1/2 tsp Chili powder; 1 tbsp Dried shrimp or dried small fish powder; 80 ml Water; 1/3 tsp Salt; 200 g Grilled fish or tuna; 1 Cucumber; 1 Tomato

A home recipe for northern Ghana's wasawasa that keeps the idea of yam flour while using cassava flour and cornflour that are easier to find. How to sprinkle in the water, steaming times, loosening the granules, the red sauce, serving with fish and vegetables, storage, reheating the next day, flour substitutions and why it goes wrong.

Published: October 25, 2026Total: 1 hr 5 minLevel: Intermediate

Cooking flow

Cooking steps

STEP 11 / 6

Sprinkle water into the flour

8 min

Adding lukewarm water a little at a time to the flour and making wasawasa grains with the fingertips — Don't add the water all at once. Rub with your fingertips into small grains, about like damp breadcrumbs

No heat is needed. Put 160 g cassava flour, 80 g cornflour and 1/2 tsp salt in a bowl and drizzle in lukewarm water of about 40 °C (105 °F), 1 tbsp at a time. Rub the flour between your fingertips and mix until no dry flour remains and you have small grains of 2–4 mm (1/8 in), like damp breadcrumbs. Adding water all at once makes it clay-like, so stop at the first 100 ml; it should hold together when squeezed in your hand and crumble when touched lightly.

STEP 22 / 6

Even out the grains with a sieve

7 min

Sifting the dampened wasawasa flour to even out the grains — Evening out the grains in a sieve keeps them from clumping when steamed

No heat is needed. Put the dampened flour in a coarse sieve and shake it over a bowl. Use the fine grains that fall through, and break big clumps with your fingers to 2–3 mm (1/8 in) before passing them through again. The more evenly sized the grains, the less large lumps and powdery patches mix together in the finished dish. Don't force hard lumps stuck in the sieve through; crumble them by hand and stop when the grains look even.

STEP 33 / 6

First steaming

15 min

Spreading wasawasa grains in the steamer and steaming them the first time — Fifteen minutes in a cloth-lined steamer. If the steam stops, a powdery feel remains

Bring 1 L of water to a boil in a pot over medium-high heat and line a steamer with a damp, wrung-out cloth. Spread the grains no more than 2 cm (3/4 in) deep, cover, and steam over medium heat for 15 minutes. You want a steady stream of steam, grains with a translucent surface, and no powdery feel when you pinch one. If the water runs low, add boiling water so the steam never stops.

STEP 44 / 6

Sprinkle with water and loosen

10 min

Adding oil and salted water to steamed wasawasa and loosening it with a wooden spoon — Add a little oil and salted water and loosen before the second steaming. Stop before the grains get heavy

Move the steamed grains to a bowl and, while still hot, drizzle over 30 ml lukewarm water, 1 tbsp red palm oil or peanut oil and 1/4 tsp salt. Lift from the bottom gently with a wooden spoon or fork, loosening large clumps to 1 cm (3/8 in) or smaller. Return to the steamer and steam 8 minutes over medium heat. After the second steaming, steam is rising, the grains are crumbly, and they fall off lightly when lifted with a wooden spoon.

STEP 55 / 6

Make the red sauce

12 min

Cooking onion, tomato, chili and dried fish in red palm oil to make the sauce — Make the sauce over medium-low heat without scorching the oil. It is done when red oil floats

Put 2 tsp red palm oil in a small frying pan and cook 80 g thinly sliced onion over medium-low heat for 3 minutes. When the edges turn translucent, add the garlic, ginger, chili powder and dried shrimp and cook 1 minute. Add the chopped tomato, 80 ml water and 1/3 tsp salt, and simmer over medium heat for 6–8 minutes. Turn off the heat when the surface bubbles, red oil floats on top, and dragging a wooden spoon across the bottom briefly leaves a line.

STEP 66 / 6

Plate and combine at the table

5 min

Finished wasawasa plated in a dish with red sauce, fish and vegetables — Mix the sauce in a little at a time at the table. Keeping the grains light is the wasawasa way

No heat is needed. Mound the wasawasa about 3 cm (1 1/4 in) high in the center of a dish and spoon on 2–3 tbsp of red sauce. Add 50 g flaked fish, the cucumber cut 5 mm thick, tomato wedges and the raw onion you set aside. Mixing in all the sauce at the start makes the grains heavy, so combine a little at a time at the table. If it feels dry, drizzle on just 2 tsp warm water and loosen it.

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Ingredients

1 / 2

The wasawasa

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Cassava flour	160 g	If you have yam flour, replace with 240 g. If gari is coarse, grind it finer in a grinder
Cornflour	80 g	Finely ground corn flour. Coarse corn grits alone leave hard grains
Lukewarm water	120 ml	About 40 °C (105 °F). Adjust by about 10 ml depending on how dry the flour is
Salt	1/2 tsp	Add another 1/4 tsp after steaming
Red palm oil or peanut oil	1 tbsp	For finishing. Rice bran or other neutral oil if you want a lighter aroma

2 / 2

Red sauce and accompaniments

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Onion	1/2 (about 100 g)	Set a little aside, thinly sliced, to serve raw
Tomato	1 (about 150 g)	If you have no fully ripe tomato, use 100 g canned diced tomatoes
Garlic	1 clove	Finely chopped
Ginger	8 g	Finely chopped
Chili powder	1/2 tsp	1/4 tsp if you don't like heat
Dried shrimp or dried small fish powder	1 tbsp	Brings the umami of the local seafood. Omit if you leave out fish
Water	80 ml	To loosen the sauce
Salt	1/3 tsp	Adjust for the saltiness of the fish
Grilled fish or tuna	200 g	Ordinary fish; grilled mackerel or salmon works too
Cucumber	1	Cut on the diagonal, 5 mm (1/4 in) thick
Tomato	1	Cut into wedges

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Wasawasa turns flour back into grains: a meal from northern Ghana

On the days you make a flour dish, the kitchen goes a little quiet. You don't pour in the water all at once; you rub the flour between your fingertips and sort the grains through a sieve. Unlike the energy of a dish simmered in a pot, wasawasa is a dish where you raise small grains.

Wasawasa (Wasa wasa) is a steamed dish tied to the food culture of northern Ghana, especially Dagbon. The Crop Trust recipe explains that dried yam peel is ground to flour and steamed to a texture like couscous. Graphic Online likewise presents it as a traditional northern Ghanaian dish in which dried yam is milled and the flour is steamed as small grains or pellets.

The hard part in a home kitchen is getting the yam flour itself. If you can find instant yam flour at an African grocer or online, that is the shortcut; but to get close with pantry-friendly ingredients, mixing cassava flour with cornflour is the realistic way. It is not the fully traditional version. Still, if you keep the skeleton of it (sprinkle water into the flour a little at a time, even out the grains, steam, then loosen), you get a crumbly staple unlike white rice or fufu.

Even among Ghanaian dishes, the texture is quite different from waakye (in Japanese), cooked beans and rice, from banku, which binds fermented corn, and from tuo zaafi (in Japanese), where flour is stirred into a paste. Wasawasa is less about soaking up broth than about coating the grains with sauce and oil as you eat.

Scooping wasawasa grains with a wooden spatula and setting them beside red sauce to check the texture — Wasawasa is not porridge; keep the grains crumbly. Break up big clumps before and after steaming

If you can get yam flour

If you can get yam flour or instant pounded yam flour, replace the cassava flour and cornflour in the ingredient list with 240 g yam flour. Because each product takes up water differently, start with 100 ml of water and add 2 tsp at a time until the grains look like damp breadcrumbs.

Ingredients (serves 4) and substitutes

Flours, red palm oil, fish, vegetables and a steamer laid out in the kitchen for wasawasa — Sorting the flours, steamer, oil and hot-sauce ingredients first makes it less confusing

Allergy and heat notes

This recipe involves dried shrimp, fish, and peanuts if you use peanut oil. If you use dried shrimp, watch for shellfish allergy. If you let people add chili at the table, it is easier to share the dish with children and people who don't like heat.

What you need for this dish

What is worth hunting for is not the ordinary fish and vegetables but the flours and the West African-style oil that are hard to find nearby. When you can't get yam flour, mixing cassava flour with cornflour makes it easier to get the lightness of the grains.

Water and grain size are where it goes wrong

Because wasawasa has so few ingredients, how you add the water becomes the flavor. Flours differ in how much water they absorb from product to product, so judging by the condition of the grains is steadier than adding all the water in the recipe.

Problem	Cause	Fix
Heavy like clay	Added the water all at once; didn't sift the grains	Add 1 tbsp dry cornflour and loosen by hand to 2–4 mm
Powdery	Too little water; weak steam	Sprinkle on 2 tsp lukewarm water and steam 5 more minutes over medium heat
Big clumps remain	Didn't pass through the sieve	Break with a fork while hot and steam for 3 more minutes
Oily	Too much finishing oil	Use less sauce and serve with extra cucumber and tomato
Strong bitterness	Type of flour, burnt oil, old flour	Switch to fresh flour and add ingredients before the oil smokes

Wasawasa in Ghana has a slightly earthy aroma that comes from the yam peel and the drying process. A substitute version cannot fully reproduce that. Rather than trying to approach it by scorching, put priority on not grinding the flour too fine and adding umami with the red sauce and fish; that makes it hold together as a dish for the table.

It is not a dish eaten for its springiness like fufu, so don't knead it. Overmixing turns it from "steamed flour" into dumplings. Just repeat these three things: make the grains, steam, loosen.

Serving, storing and bringing it back the next day

Leftover wasawasa spread in a shallow container to cool, separate from the red sauce — Store the grains and the sauce separately. Spread shallow, they cool faster and are easier to loosen the next day

Wasawasa is eaten hot, mixing in the hot sauce, fish, vegetables and oil a little at a time. The recipes at African Food Network and Pulse Ghana also present it with fish, chili, oil and vegetables. For a home meal, flake grilled fish over the top and add cucumber and tomato for moisture to make it easier to eat.

Seen as a northern Ghanaian meal, wasawasa is not just a "steamed flour staple." As Graphic Online treats it as a cultural dish of Dagbon, one plate brings together yam grown in dry country and the way it is processed, fish and spicy oil, and sides shared at the table. Even when you make it elsewhere, putting red sauce, fish, thinly sliced onion and cucumber beside it, rather than serving only the white staple, makes the meaning of the dish much easier to see.

If you serve beans, a small portion of black-eyed pea stew such as red red beside it makes a satisfying plate of flour and beans. On days when you want a peanut aroma, make groundnut soup as the broth and scoop up small amounts of wasawasa so it doesn't feel heavy. And if you want the feel of a spicy street stall, adding a little kelewele (in Japanese), fried plantain, makes a fun combination.

When storing, keep the wasawasa and the sauce apart. Spread the grains in a shallow container, cover once the heat has gone, and keep refrigerated until the next day. Refrigerate the sauce in a separate container and finish it within 2 days. Fish mixed in and left for a long time smells, so combine the fish just before eating.

To reheat, microwave at 600 W for 1 minute, drizzle with 2 tsp lukewarm water, loosen with a fork, and heat 30 seconds more. To re-steam in a pot, 5 minutes over medium heat. Too much water makes it porridge-like, so add water only in teaspoon amounts.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. I don't have yam flour. Can I make it with cassava flour alone?

You can, but cassava flour alone tends to turn a bit chewy and the grains get heavy. For a first try, 160 g cassava flour with 80 g cornflour gives crumblier results after steaming. When you get yam flour, replace the 240 g of flour with yam flour and adjust the water starting from 100 ml.

Q2. Can I use gari instead?

Fine gari works. Coarse gari tends to leave hard grains as is, so grind it a little finer in a grinder first. Gari has a sour note from fermentation, so you get a wasawasa-like texture but a different aroma from yam flour.

Q3. Is red palm oil essential?

It isn't. In Ghana it is also eaten with shea butter oil, peanut oil or vegetable oil. Red palm oil adds a color and aroma typical of West African cooking, but too much hides the aroma of the flour, so keep it to 1 tbsp or less. If you dislike it, finish lightly with peanut oil or a neutral oil.

Q4. How spicy is authentic?

This is a dish often served with a hot sauce, but the whole pot need not be hot. The amounts here give a gentle heat. People who want it hotter can add chili powder or shito at the table. For family meals, making the base sauce mild is the safer way.

Q5. Can I make it ahead?

The wasawasa alone can be made ahead until the next day. The grains will be firmer than when freshly made. Store it spread in a shallow container, and when reheating add lukewarm water 2 tsp at a time and loosen. Avoid storing it mixed with sauce, fish and vegetables, since both texture and aroma suffer.