country Essentials · 12 foods
Cameroon Essentials
A considered first route through Cameroon: the foods that carry its everyday habits, celebrations, ingredients, and memory.
Explore all Cameroon foods →THE
ESSENTIALS
The complete shortlist
12 foods to know.
Each selection includes the reason it belongs here—so this is a guide, not just a pile of names.
Cameroon
Ndolé
Ndole
Bitterleaf washed and rewashed to the right edge of bitter, then cooked with peanuts and crayfish.
Cameroon
Poulet DG
Chicken and fried plantain in tomato sauce, named for the boss who could afford it.
Cameroon
Eru
Shredded eru and waterleaf in palm oil, and it comes with water fufu whether you asked or not.
Cameroon
Achu and Yellow Soup
Achu
A white cocoyam mound with a well of yellow palm-oil soup beaten smooth with kanwa.
Cameroon
Soya
Beef strips off a street grill at dusk, dusted twice with peanut and chilli powder.
Cameroon
Beignets Haricots Bouillie
Fried dough, stewed beans and sweet maize porridge, ordered as one thing or not at all.
Cameroon
Koki beans
Koki
Ground black-eyed peas beaten pale with red palm oil and steamed in banana leaf.
Cameroon
Mbongo Tchobi
Black from deliberately charred spice, not from burning, and aniseed underneath the smoke.
Cameroon
Penja White Pepper
Poivre de Penja
Grown in volcanic soil in the Littoral and protected by name since 2013.
DR Congo
Bobolo
Fermented cassava packed into a leaf-wrapped stick and steamed until sour and firm.
Cameroon
Matango
Tapped from the palm in the morning and sourer by the hour, sold from jerrycans at junctions.
Cameroon
Kati Kati
Chicken charred over wood first, then turned through palm oil and njangsa afterwards.