
Bokoto in English is known as cow foot or cow leg. It’s a popular Nigerian food especially among Yoruba people.
In this recipe, we’re making flavourful bokoto, cow foot. This cow leg stew is rich, delicious and made the Nigerian cooking way.
If you are new here, hello this is The Online Cook food blog and I’m about to share this easy cooking recipe on how to cook cow foot from scratch.
Nigerian cow foot soup is a delicious dish made from cow foot or cow leg and an assortment of spices and ingredients.
When you trust the process in this cow leg recipe, you would also be able to easily prepare this dish at home.
The first step is to season and properly cook the raw bokoto before it can be added to food. To do this the ingredients listed below will be used.
Ingredients for cooking bokoto
- 1kg cow foot
- 1 onion
- 1 tsp garlic powder or 1 tbsp chopped garlic
- 1/2 tbsp ginger powder or 2 tbsp chopped ginger
- 1/2 tbsp dried thyme
- 1/2 tbsp curry powder
- 1 stock cube
- 1 tsp salt
- 3-4 cups water
- 1 scotch bonnet pepper (optional)
Let’s proceed to use the ingredient to make delicious Nigerian style cow foot.
How to cook cow foot
- Clean the cow foot well till it looks like the image above
- Peel and slice one onion
- Put the clean cow leg in a pot
- Add the chopped onions, salt, curry powder, ginger powder, garlic powder and stock cube.
- Add water and mix well.
- Cover the pot and cook for 30 – 45 minutes or till it is soft enough
- Remove the cooked cow foot from the stock (liquid) in the pot

Cooked bokoto is ready.
To maximise the use of fresh garlic and ginger, blend both of them with onions to a paste first, then add to the cow foot in the pot
While cooking, check the water level of cow foot at different intervals as well as its softness.
Add more water when the meat is not soft enough and the water very low or dried
Here is a helpful video tutorial which contains the step-by-step preparation process of cooking cow foot.
Ingredients for cow foot stew
The next step after properly boiling the bokoto is to make it into a delicious cow foot stew or peppered cow leg bokoto as some people call it.
The ingredients need are listed below.
- Cooked cow foot
- 1/2 cooking oil
- 1 bell pepper
- 1 onion
- 1 scotch bonnet pepper
- 1 red long pepper
- 1 stock cube
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ginger powder
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp curry powder
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 1/2 cup water
Let’s proceed to make peppered cowleg bokoto.
How to make peppered cow leg – bokoto
When making peppered cow leg or cow foot stew, the first thing to do is to make the pepper mix.
- Clean the bell pepper, onion, scotch bonnet pepper by removing the green stalk and seeds
- Blend with 1 1/2 cup water to a rough texture
- Heat up 1/2 cup cooking oil for 1-2 minutes
- Pour the pepper mix into the hot oil
- Season with quantity thyme, pepper, salt, curry powder, white pepper, stock cube and ginger powder listed above.
- Mix well to combine.
- Add cooked cow foot and stir well
- Cover the pot and cook on high heat for 15 mins
- After 15 minutes, stir well so that the cow foot doesn’t get stuck to the pot.
- Cook for extra 10 minutes on medium heat.
- Stir well and allow to cool down.

Just like that, delicious cow leg stew is ready.
Depending on your preference you can cook the stew for more time till it dries well to your preference.
Good news! I have attached below, a free video tutorial which shows the step-by-step cooking process of this recipe.
In summary, this recipe shows the ingredients for cooking cow foot, how to cook bokoto, ingredients for peppered cow leg and well as how to make peppered cow leg bokoto.
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