Fufu and Light Soup
Ghana’s comfort pairing: a bright, brothy tomato-ginger soup with chicken or goat, and smooth fufu for swallowing, not chewing.
- prep
- 25 min
- cook
- 1 h
- total
- 1 h 25 min
- serves
- 4
- level
- medium
Light soup is called light because it carries no palm oil and no thickener: just tomatoes, onion, ginger and chili blended into a hot, clean broth around slow-simmered meat. It is Ghana’s chicken soup for all purposes, colds included.
Fufu, the pounded cassava and plantain swallow, is its partner. Outside Ghana, instant fufu flour whisked into hot water is the accepted method, sparing the mortar, the pestle and the neighbors.
Fufu and Light Soup is one of the world's classic dishes from 67 countries.
method
Season the meat with salt and simmer with the chopped onion and a splash of water for 15 minutes to build its own base.
Add 1.2 liters of water, the whole tomatoes, whole onion, ginger, garlic and scotch bonnet. Simmer 15 minutes until the vegetables soften.
Fish out the tomatoes, onion, ginger, garlic and chili, blend them smooth, and return to the pot with the tomato paste.
Simmer 20 minutes more until the soup is bright, slightly reduced and the meat is tender. Season.
Make the fufu: whisk the flour into hot water per the packet over low heat, stirring hard, until a smooth, stretchy dough forms. Shape into smooth balls with wet hands.
Serve a fufu ball in a wide bowl, flooded with light soup and meat. Pinch, dip and swallow; chewing fufu is optional by culture.
chef's tips
- Keep the scotch bonnet whole and fish it out for perfume, or blend it for consequences.
- The blended vegetables are the soup; no stock cubes can replace that step, though one may assist.
- Fufu firms as it cools, so make it last and serve immediately.