COPPERWhat is the national dish of Guinea?
Guinea has no official national dish. The one most often listed is poulet yassa, chicken marinated in lemon and onions and served on rice, but it comes from Senegal. Inside Guinea, the daily meal is rice with a sauce, and French Wikipedia calls konkoé, a smoked-fish stew, the most prized dish in the country.
Why there is no single answer
Guinea (Guinea-Conakry) has never named a national dish, and the lists online disagree.
English Wikipedia's list of national dishes gives poulet yassa. Yassa is chicken marinated in lemon juice, mustard and a large quantity of onions, browned, then stewed in the softened onions and served over white rice. It is eaten all over West Africa, but its own Wikipedia article places its origin in Senegal, where it is one of the most iconic dishes; see Senegal's national dish.
A standard yassa uses four to six large onions for one chicken, with lemon or lime juice, mustard, garlic and chilli, and the chicken marinates for several hours or overnight. In Wolof it is yassa ganaar, ganaar meaning chicken.
Guinean sources point elsewhere. French Wikipedia says rice, which arrived later than fonio, cassava and yam, has become the staple of most Guineans, and that konkoé, a stew built on the smoked fish of the same name, usually in tomato sauce or peanut sauce, is the most prized dish in Guinea.
Rice and sauce: how Guineans really eat
A Guinean lunch is a mound of rice with one of a dozen sauces poured over it, in rural areas eaten by hand from a large shared dish. The sauces are the variety:
- Konkoé: smoked fish, in tomato or peanut sauce.
- Sauce feuille: cassava or sweet-potato leaves, pounded, with smoked fish and red palm oil.
- Sauce graine: palm-nut sauce, called gbontoè in Susu.
- Sauce gombo: okra with smoked or fresh fish.
- Sauce arachide: peanut paste sauce, close to Mali's tigadèguèna.
Soup kandia, the okra sauce
One of those sauces is shared with Senegal, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire: soup kandia, named after kandia, the local word for okra. The okra is sliced very thin and never rinsed, because the mucilage it releases is the point of the dish. It simmers with beef, smoked and dried fish, dried shrimp and fermented locust beans for 25 minutes, then takes 250 ml of red palm oil and 20 minutes more until it is deep orange and thick enough to hold a spoon upright. It is served over white rice.
Besides rice, soup kandia can be eaten with fufu, tô or attiéké, the fermented cassava couscous of Côte d'Ivoire. Our Guinean version uses fermented locust beans, called soumbala in Guinea and nététou in Senegal.
Regional dishes
Guinea's four natural regions eat differently. Lower Guinea, on the coast, cooks konkoé and yétissé, fish or meat stewed with vegetables and cassava. In the Fouta Djallon highlands, the Fula eat fonio and dairy, such as kössan (curdled milk); Guinea grows most of the world's fonio, over 75% of world production in 2019. The grain needs little water to grow and is easy to digest. Upper Guinea makes tô, and Forest Guinea eats plantain and an eggplant and palm-oil sauce.
Two Fouta specialities stand out. Latchiri kössan, corn with curdled milk made right after milking, is required at naming ceremonies and weddings. Kétoun, a stew of cassava, sweet potato and taro with smoked fish, is the most eaten dish of the region. Across the country, tapalapa, a bread of wheat, millet, yellow corn and cowpea flours, is one of the most consumed foods.
Other dishes to know from Guinea
For ceremonies, Guineans cook riz gras, rice cooked in a red broth. Our jollof rice fries tomato paste in red palm oil for 10 minutes, then cooks the rice in a broth of beef and smoked fish.
English Wikipedia also lists fou fou, called tôreuy, topped with okra sauce, as a traditional Guinean dish.
To drink, Guineans make bissap from hibiscus flowers, a drink French Wikipedia traces to Guinea before it spread to Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Benin. Djindjan is a ginger juice with orange and lemon, and kirri yé a baobab fruit juice. Palm wine is drunk in non-Muslim areas.
Fufu here is cassava and green plantain pounded hot in a wooden mortar for 15 to 20 minutes until it forms one elastic ball, eaten with groundnut, palm-nut or okra sauce.
You will find all three dishes, with step-by-step methods, on our page about the food of Guinea, and more from the region in our guide to West African food.
The recipes
- Soup kandia🇬🇳 Guinea · 1 hour and 35 minutes
Jollof rice🇬🇳 Guinea · 1 hour and 35 minutes
Fufu🇬🇳 Guinea · 1 hour
Questions people ask
What is the national dish of Guinea?
Guinea has no official national dish. Poulet yassa is the one most often listed, but it is Senegalese in origin; in Guinea the daily meal is rice with sauce, and konkoé (smoked-fish stew) is described as the most prized dish.
Is poulet yassa from Guinea or Senegal?
Yassa originates in Senegal and is eaten across West Africa, including Guinea.
What is the staple food of Guinea?
Rice, eaten with a sauce. Fonio, cassava, corn and yam are also important, especially in rural areas.
What is konkoé?
A Guinean stew built on konkoé smoked fish, usually in a tomato sauce or a peanut sauce, served with rice.
What is Guinea's national drink?
There is no official one, but bissap, a hibiscus drink, and ginger juice (djindjan) are the traditional drinks.
Keep reading
- Traditional food of Guinea: 13 dishes to know
- What is the national dish of Benin?
- What is the national dish of Burkina Faso?
- 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?