COPPERWhat is the national dish of Togo?
Togo has no official national dish, but the one most often cited is fufu: boiled white yam pounded hot in a wooden mortar until it becomes a smooth, elastic dough, then eaten by hand with a light broth or a palm-nut sauce. Corn doughs such as akoumé are eaten even more often, since maize is Togo's most consumed food.
Why fufu?
No law names Togo's national dish. Wikipedia's list of national dishes gives fufu, and English Wikipedia's article on Togolese cuisine describes it as very common. The Togolese recipe site Saveurs Togo files it under the Central and Plateaux regions.
It is worth knowing that maize is the most consumed food in Togo. So the everyday corn dough, akoumé (akplè in Ewe), is at least as central as fufu. Fufu is the dish people point to; akoumé is a daily staple.
How fufu is made
Togolese fufu is usually white yam, though cassava, plantain or taro versions exist. The yam is peeled, cut into 4 cm chunks and boiled 20 to 25 minutes until a knife goes through without resistance.
It goes into a wooden mortar while still hot. One person pounds with the pestle while a second turns the paste between strokes, for 10 to 15 minutes, adding cooking water a spoonful at a time. The aim is a light, elastic dough that pulls away from the mortar with no lumps. It is shaped into balls with wet hands and served at once. Our fufu recipe gives quantities for 1 kg of yam.
What fufu is eaten with
Fufu is eaten by hand, dipped into a sauce. In Togo the classic partners are:
- Sauce claire: a light broth of fish, beef or chicken.
- Dékou déssi: palm-nut sauce with offal, beef and fish.
- Azin'g déssi: peanut paste sauce.
- Fétri déssi: okra sauce with palm oil, shrimp, crab or smoked fish.
- Gboma déssi: a sauce of gboma, a local spinach, with meat, smoked fish or seafood.
- Adémè déssi: a sauce of jute leaves with palm oil and smoked fish.
Togo's corn doughs
Akoumé is made two ways: dry corn flour stirred into boiling water until firm, or fermented wet corn dough, sieved and settled, which gives a lighter, whiter paste. Ghana's banku and Burkina Faso's tô are close relatives.
In Ewe and Gen, the doughs are named by method: éwɔ-koumé for the dry-flour version, éma-koumé for the fermented one. Made with dried cassava flour instead of corn, the same dough is called konkonte, and with fermented cassava dough it becomes agbélimá-koumé.
Djenkoumé is the salted version, from the Ewe for salt (djé) and akoumé. The maize flour is rained into a spiced tomato and chicken broth and stirred hard for about 10 minutes until the red dough pulls away from the pot. It is eaten without sauce, with roast chicken. In Benin the same dish is amiwo; see Benin's national dish.
Our djenkoumé rubs a jointed chicken with a paste of onion, garlic and ginger, browns it, then roasts it at 200 °C for 30 to 35 minutes while the wings and carcass simmer in tomato sauce and a litre of water to make the broth for 400 g of maize flour.
Feast dishes and street food
On the coast, the festive dish is yaka-yèkè, a very fine corn couscous shared at Epé-Ékpé, one of the main festivals of the region, with goat, mutton or beef sauce.
Common dishes include koklo mêmê, braised chicken with a tomato marinade, and ayimolou, beans and rice cooked together. In the north, wassa-wassa is a couscous made from yam, and tchoukoutou is the local sorghum beer.
Street stalls sell groundnuts, omelettes, brochettes, corn on the cob and cooked prawns. Gaou, spicy bean fritters, are Togo's version of the akara found in Benin and Nigeria.
Other dishes to know from Togo
Akpan is fermented maize, eaten as a dessert in Togo and Benin. Maize is soaked 24 hours, ground and left to sour for 48 hours, then served very cold with sugar and condensed milk.
To start a meal, Togolese cooks serve papaya salad, tomato and onion salad, or avocado salad with sole. In the south, the sakomi is a baguette stuffed with cabbage, carrot, beetroot, spaghetti, boiled egg, sausage, beans, mayonnaise and a spicy red pepper sauce.
Kom, steamed balls of fermented corn dough in corn husks, is the Ewe cousin of Ghanaian kenkey; see Ghana's national dish.
You will find all three dishes, with step-by-step methods, on our page about the food of Togo, and more from the region in our guide to West African food.
The recipes
Djenkoume
AkpanQuestions people ask
What is the national dish of Togo?
Togo has no official national dish. Fufu, pounded yam eaten with sauce, is the one most often cited.
What is the most eaten food in Togo?
Maize. It is cooked into doughs such as akoumé, eaten with okra, leaf or tomato sauces.
What is fufu made of in Togo?
Usually boiled white yam, pounded in a wooden mortar. Cassava, plantain or taro can also be used.
What is déssi?
In Togolese dish names, déssi means sauce: fétri déssi is okra sauce, gboma déssi is a spinach-type leaf sauce, dékou déssi is palm-nut sauce.
Is fufu chewed?
Fufu is pinched off by hand and dipped in sauce; across West Africa it is commonly swallowed without much chewing.
Keep reading
- Traditional food of Togo: 14 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?