Sierra Leone: Food and the National Dish

A cuisine built on rice, and one sauce eaten everywhere

Sierra Leone's food centres on rice, eaten at nearly every meal across the country's different ethnic groups, paired with a range of sauces, or "plasas," poured generously over it. No single sauce is more widely eaten than cassava leaf.

The everyday staple: cassava leaf sauce

Cassava leaf sauce, pounded cassava leaves cooked down with palm oil, fish or meat, and hot pepper, served generously over rice, is Sierra Leone's most widely eaten dish, genuinely popular across the country's different ethnic communities rather than tied to just one region. Known locally simply as "plasas," a term used for the whole category of sauces eaten over rice, cassava leaf is the most common version found in homes and local eateries alike.

Rice, cassava and a genuinely shared pantry

Rice, the true everyday staple eaten at nearly every meal, and cassava, in both leaf and root form, anchor most Sierra Leonean cooking. Palm oil, hot pepper and fish, both fresh and dried, round out a pantry shared broadly across the country's different ethnic groups rather than varying sharply by region.

History behind the sauce

Rice cultivation has deep roots in Sierra Leone, with local farming traditions predating European contact by centuries and shaping the country's food culture around rice as the true daily staple rather than any imported grain. Cassava, introduced from South America during the Atlantic trade era, was adopted widely enough across West Africa that its leaves became a genuine pantry staple in Sierra Leone alongside the plant's starchy root.

Dishes to know

Four more to recognise across Sierra Leone:

• Groundnut soup — a peanut-based stew, usually with meat or fish,

served over rice.

• Jollof rice — a tomato-based rice dish, shared across much of West

Africa.

• Fufu — a dough-like staple made from cassava or plantain flour,

eaten with sauces by hand.

• Akara — bean fritters, a popular street-food snack.

Drinks

Ginger beer, made from fresh ginger root, and palm wine, tapped from palm trees and mildly fermented, are both genuine traditional drinks across Sierra Leone. Coffee and locally brewed beer are also commonly consumed.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians will find rice and vegetable-based sauces manageable, though fish and meat are common additions to most everyday cooking. Tap water is not reliably safe outside major hotels; bottled water is the safer default. Trying cassava leaf sauce over rice at a local eatery is a genuine, widely available way to taste Sierra Leone's most everyday dish.

What to take from the table

Cassava leaf sauce over rice, eaten across ethnic groups and households nationwide, is the truest everyday picture of Sierra Leonean food: simple, shared, and poured generously over the country's true staple grain.