Uganda

🇺🇬Uganda

Akeyo

A named Ugandan greens dish from the north, simmered with onion and groundnut.

🇺🇬Uganda

Atapa

A Ugandan smoked-fish and greens preparation cooked with local aromatics.

🇺🇬Uganda

Bhaji Ugandan

Bhaji

Ugandan vegetable fritters shaped and fried as a tea-time or market snack.

🇺🇬Uganda

Boo Otigo

A northern Ugandan leafy relish cooked with groundnut and served with millet or cassava starch.

🇺🇬Uganda

Bugisu Arabica

Bugisu coffee

Washed arabica grown on the volcanic slopes of Mount Elgon by smallholders around Mbale, Uganda's best-known coffee origin.

🇰🇪Kenya

Chapati

A Kenyan layered flatbread of wheat flour and oil, pan-fried, a daily and festive staple

🇺🇬Uganda

Dodo

Amaranth leaves, the everyday green of Ugandan kitchens, steamed briefly and finished with groundnut paste or simsim.

🇺🇬Uganda

Enkejje

A named Ugandan freshwater-fish preparation served with a staple starch.

🇺🇬Uganda

Entula

Small, round, hard bitter eggplants eaten raw as an appetiser or cooked into stews, sold in green and orange bunches.

🇺🇬Uganda

Eshabwe

Ghee whipped with rock salt solution and cold water until it turns into a white, mousse-like sauce, served at Ankole ceremonies.

🇺🇬Uganda

Firinda

Beans boiled until they collapse, then sieved and mashed smooth with ghee into a pale purée, an Ankole dish of the west.

🇺🇬Uganda

Gonja

Sweet plantain roasted whole over charcoal until the skin blackens and the flesh caramelises, sold at every taxi park and roadside.

🇺🇬Uganda

Groundnut Sauce

Binyebwa

Raw groundnuts ground to a paste and cooked out with water, onion and sometimes smoked fish or mushrooms into a thick red-brown sauce.

🇺🇬Uganda

Kabalagala

Ripe sweet bananas mashed with cassava flour and fried into small dense pancakes, sold in stacks by the roadside.

🇺🇬Uganda

Kalo

Finger millet flour worked into boiling water, sometimes with cassava flour, into a stiff dark brown loaf torn by hand and dipped into sauce.

🇺🇬Uganda

Katogo

Matooke or cassava boiled together with offal, beans, groundnut sauce or meat in one pot so the starch takes up the sauce — the standard Ugandan breakfast.

🇺🇬Uganda

Katunkuma

Very small round bitter berries of a nightshade, eaten raw or cooked and often taken as a medicine as much as a food.

🇰🇪Kenya

Kenyan Chai

Chai

A Kenyan black tea with milk, sugar, and cardamom, a national and hospitality icon

🇺🇬Uganda

Kikalayi

A Ugandan one-pot meat and vegetable preparation served with matooke or another starch.

🇺🇬Uganda

Kikomando

A chapati torn into strips and mixed straight into a plate of fried beans — the cheapest filling meal in Kampala.

🇺🇬Uganda

Kishongo

A traditional plant-ash salt made by burning specific grasses and papyrus and filtering the ash, used to tenderise beans and greens.

🇺🇬Uganda

Lakotokoto

A Ugandan leafy vegetable preparation cooked with groundnut or sesame sauce.

🇺🇬Kampala, Uganda

Luwombo

Chicken, beef, smoked fish or groundnut sauce tied into a folded banana leaf and steamed, so the parcel arrives at the table still knotted.

🇺🇬Gulu, Uganda

Malakwang

Sour hibiscus leaves boiled and finished with groundnut paste into a sharp purple-green stew, eaten with millet bread or sweet potato.

🇺🇬Uganda

Malewa

Bamboo shoots from the slopes of Mount Elgon, smoked over a fire, dried and then cooked slowly in groundnut sauce.

🇺🇬Gulu, Uganda

Malwa

Fermented millet mash in a communal pot, topped with hot water and drunk through long reed straws by everyone sitting round it.

🇰🇪Kenya

Mandazi

Mahamri

A Kenyan sweet fried dough, golden and puffy, served with chai, a daily and street classic

🇰🇪Kenya

Matoke

A Kenyan stew of green bananas cooked in tomato sauce with meat, a daily and regional classic

🇺🇬Uganda

Matooke

Green cooking bananas peeled, wrapped in their own leaves and steamed for hours over a pot until they turn soft and pale yellow, then mashed in the bundle.

🇺🇬Kampala, Uganda

Muchomo

Pork or goat cut into cubes, skewered and grilled over charcoal, salted heavily and served with raw onion, tomato and cassava.

🇺🇬Jinja, Uganda

Mugaati na Maggi

Mugaati n'amaggi

Wheat dough spread thin on a hot plate, an egg cracked and spread over it with minced meat, then folded into a square parcel.

🇺🇬Jinja, Uganda

Mukene

Tiny silver fish netted at night on Lake Victoria and dried in the sun on racks, then fried with onion and tomato or ground into a powder.

🇺🇬Uganda

Nakati

A leafy nightshade green with a slightly bitter, mineral flavour, steamed or cooked with groundnut paste.

🇺🇬Uganda

Ngege

Fresh tilapia prepared in Uganda with onion, tomato and local spices.

🇺🇬Uganda

Nsenene

Bush grasshoppers caught in their two annual swarms, de-winged, fried with onion and salt and sold hot in paper cones.

🇺🇬Uganda

Nswaa

Winged termites collected at the start of the rains as they leave the mound, then fried dry or sun-dried and eaten by the handful.