Africa → Sierra Leone → Freetown
🍢 SNACK
Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters)
Overripe bananas beaten with rice flour, nutmeg and sugar into a soft batter, dropped by the spoonful into hot oil and fried into light, golden, gluten-free balls.
Sierra Leonean · easy · serves 4
prep 15 min · cook 20 min · plus 20 min hands-off time
~396 cal · 4g protein · 69g carbs · 12g fat · 4g fiber · 24g sugars · 2g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Rice akara is Freetown's own akara. Where Nigerian akara is made from beans, the Sierra Leonean version is a sweet batter of very ripe bananas and rice flour, scented with nutmeg and fried into small golden balls that taste like a cross between a banana pancake and a doughnut.
The bananas are mashed with sugar, a pinch of salt and nutmeg, then rice flour is beaten in until the batter is creamy and soft enough to drop from a spoon. It rests for about 20 minutes before being scooped into very hot oil and fried until golden, then drained on old newspaper by the sellers who make it.
It is a favourite breakfast and snack, eaten with a peppery onion and tomato gravy or fried fish and washed down with cold ginger beer, and for Sierra Leoneans abroad it is a taste of home.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and gluten-, dairy-, nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
- 4 medium very ripe bananas, peeled, the blacker the skins, the sweeter the akara
- 160 g (about 1 cup) rice flour
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 to 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 tsp baking powder
- a pinch salt
- 2 to 4 tbsp water, only as needed
- about 750 ml vegetable oil, for deep frying
Instructions
- 1Mash the bananas with the sugar in a bowl until smooth, or blend them to a purée.
- 2Beat in the nutmeg, salt, baking powder and rice flour, then add water a spoonful at a time until the batter is thick, creamy and drops slowly from a spoon.
- 3Leave the batter to rest for 20 minutes.
- 4Heat the oil in a deep pan until very hot, about 180C (350F). Drop in small spoonfuls of batter, a few at a time, and fry for 2 to 3 minutes, turning once, until deep golden all over.✎ Chef’s noteIf the oil is not hot enough the batter spreads and soaks up oil. If they brown before the middle cooks, lower the heat a little and make them smaller.
- 5Drain on paper and serve warm, on their own, with a peppery onion gravy or with fried fish.
Sierra Leonean home and street tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Freetown. Rice is not a side dish. It is the meal, and everything else is plassas, the sauce that goes over it; the standard complaint is that a meal without rice does not count as one. Groundnut soup, okra and jollof rotate around it, and pepper is used with an unapologetically heavy hand.
🗺️
Sierra Leone. Rice is the point of the meal rather than the side. A Sierra Leonean household counts a day without rice as a day without food, and among the upland and swamp varieties grown here there are surviving pockets of African rice, Oryza glaberrima, domesticated along the Niger two or three thousand years ago and a different species from the Asian rice grown almost everywhere else.
🌍
Africa. Much of what reads as timeless African cooking is younger than the Atlantic crossings. Maize, cassava, groundnut, chilli and tomato all arrived from the Americas after 1500 and pushed older crops aside; millet, sorghum, teff, yam and fonio are the ones that were already here, and the map still shows the join.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Sierra Leone
Cassava Leaf StewFinely pounded cassava leaves slow-cooked with palm oil, beef, and smoked fish over rice.
Sierra Leonean Fry FryA plate of assorted fried things with a peppery gravy to dip them in, the Freetown street breakfast.
Krain KrainChopped jute leaves stewed with red palm oil and smoked fish into a savory green sauce, served over rice.
Browse all Sierra Leone recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Blender.
Storing it: Cool leftover rice quickly and refrigerate within an hour. Keep up to 2 days and reheat until piping hot all the way through.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters)?
Overripe bananas beaten with rice flour, nutmeg and sugar into a soft batter, dropped by the spoonful into hot oil and fried into light, golden, gluten-free balls.
Where does Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters) come from?
Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters) is a Sierra Leonean dish from Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Can Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions. Treat the substitutions as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we still count coconut as a tree nut to be cautious, although the FDA stopped listing it as one in 2025), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Rice Akara (Sierra Leonean Banana Fritters) take to make?
About 55 min in all: 15 minutes prep and 20 minutes cooking, plus 20 min of hands-off waiting the method needs, serving 4.
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