COPPERWhat is the national dish of Burkina Faso?
The national dish of Burkina Faso is tô (saghbo in Mooré): a firm paste of millet, sorghum or corn flour beaten in boiling water until smooth, then eaten by hand with a sauce, most often okra. It has no legal status, but French-language sources call it the national dish, while English lists often name riz gras, the festive rice.
Tô or riz gras?
Burkina Faso has never voted or decreed a national dish, so the answer depends on who you ask.
French Wikipedia calls tô the national dish, and the Burkinabè culture site Infos Culture du Faso describes tô of millet with dried-okra sauce as "the soul of Burkinabè cuisine", a base food in most households. In rural areas a meal is typically tô with a sauce of jute or baobab leaves, dried fish and soumbala.
English Wikipedia's list of national dishes gives riz gras instead. That dish is real and loved, but it is party food, served at weddings and celebrations in the cities. Tô is what people eat every day.
How tô is made
Tô is cereal flour and water, nothing else. The hard part is the arm work. A quarter of the flour is mixed into cold water and stirred into a pot of boiling water to thicken for 5 minutes. The rest of the flour then goes in a handful at a time while the cook beats with a long wooden stick against the side of the pot for 10 to 15 minutes.
The paste is ready when it is stiff, smooth and pulls away cleanly. Lumps mean the beating stopped. It steams for 5 minutes, covered, and is shaped into balls with a wet spoon. No sugar, no milk, no salt goes in the paste itself. Our tô recipe gives exact quantities for 400 g of sorghum flour.
Where tô is eaten beyond Burkina Faso
Tô is not only Burkinabè. The same paste is eaten in Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Benin and Togo, under different names. Some cooks add tamarind or lemon juice to the boiling water, which gives the paste a slight sourness.
In Burkina Faso it can be made from three cereals. Millet, sorghum and corn all work. In Mooré-speaking homes it is saghbo; the cook shapes it with a spoon or ladle into small elongated cakes and serves it hot with the sauce.
What tô is eaten with
The sauce makes the meal. The most common ones:
Our okra sauce starts with an onion fried in shea butter, then 100 g of crumbled dried fish and 30 g of soumbala for 5 minutes. Sliced okra simmers in it for 20 minutes on low heat until slimy and thick, and the salt goes in only at the end.
- Sauce gombo: okra simmered with dried fish and soumbala until slimy and thick, the classic partner.
- Sauce oseille: made from sorrel leaves.
- Sauce de sésame: made with sesame.
- Baobab or jute leaf sauce: common in villages, often with soumbala, the fermented néré seed condiment.
Riz gras, the festive alternative
Riz gras means "fat rice": rice cooked directly in a red broth of meat, tomato and vegetables, so it absorbs the fat and colour. A version made with soumbala, which gives it a strong smell, is known as riz soumbala (Moui kolgo in Mooré) and probably started in Ouagadougou.
The key step in our riz gras recipe is lifting out the chicken, cabbage, carrots and eggplant before the rice goes in, then checking that the boiling broth sits 2 cm above the grains. The rice cooks 20 to 25 minutes, turns orange and glossy, and the vegetables go back on top to serve.
Mali makes a close cousin; see Mali's national dish and its peanut sauce, which is also eaten with tô.
Other dishes to know from Burkina Faso
Burkinabè food also includes babenda, a Mossi stew traditionally made with millet, wild greens and potash and now often with tomatoes, fermented beans, fish or cabbage; poulet bicyclette, grilled free-range chicken; dégué, steamed millet with curdled milk or yogurt, the same dessert Senegal calls thiakry; and gapal, millet flour mixed with yogurt. Dolo, a millet beer served in a calabash, is the traditional drink.
Restaurants also serve dishes from the neighbours, such as kédjénou, the Ivorian fish or meat stew, and poulet yassa from Senegal. Street drinks include bissap, made from hibiscus flowers, zoom-koom, a millet and ginger drink, and tédo, baobab fruit juice. For the Ivorian side, see Côte d'Ivoire's national dish.
You will find our recipes with step-by-step methods on our page about the food of Burkina Faso, and the neighbouring kitchens in our guide to West African food.
The recipes
Riz grasQuestions people ask
What is the national dish of Burkina Faso?
Tô, a firm paste of millet, sorghum or corn flour eaten with sauce, is the dish most often called the national dish. It has no official status, and riz gras is sometimes named instead.
What does tô taste like?
On its own it is plain and slightly earthy, since it contains no salt. All the flavour comes from the sauce, usually okra with dried fish and soumbala.
What is tô called in Mooré?
Saghbo.
How do you eat tô?
With the right hand: pinch off a piece of the paste, dip it into the sauce and eat it. It is served on a shared platter.
Is tô the same as fufu?
No. Tô is cereal flour cooked in water, while fufu is boiled yam, cassava or plantain pounded in a mortar.
Keep reading
- Traditional food of Burkina Faso: 11 dishes to know
- What is the national dish of Benin?
- What is the national dish of Cabo Verde?
- What is the national dish of Côte d'Ivoire?
- What is the national dish of The Gambia?
- What is the national dish of Ghana?