Hi there ! Welcome to my blog, I must say it is a privilege having you on this side of the Internet.

In this blog post, I will be writing about a delicious but highly underrated recipe; Egusi and Okro soup Recipe.

As you already know, Egusi soup is a very common Nigerian soup and most recently it went global as a result of the egusi and fufu challenge. One thing we all agree on is the fact that Egusi Soup is delicious.

Let me do a little bit of introduction; Egusi is the seed of melon fruit. Before these seeds are ready to be used for cooking, they are first dried with the shells and then de-shelled i.e the shells are removed.

After the shells are removed then we get our egusi which is used in many cooking recipes. Often times, Egusi is usually blended in its dried form to powder or blended with water to make a paste which is then used for cooking.

Egusi is commonly used for cooking in many west African countries such as; Mali, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana and many more. And as you must have guessed, different countries have different names for it.

Some of the name are; Egusi, egwusi, agushi,ohue, agusi and so on.

In Nigeria, there are so many Egusi recipes one of which I will be sharing in this blog post and many more such as;

Egusi soup with amunututu leaves

Egusi soup with Ugu leaves

Egusi soup with Efo Gbagba| Efo Igbo

Egusi Pepper soup

Egusi soup with Efo Iyana paja | Hospital Too Far Leaves

Just as Egusi soup is a popular soup, Okro soup is also very popular.

To avoid confusion, Okro is also called Okra or lady fingers and some of the reason for its popularity amongst Nigerians are;

• It is easy to cook and there are no special skills needed to cook a delicious okro soup.
• It is pocket friendly
• It taste amazing and combines well with any swallow
• It helps with easy bowel movement because it is a vegetable and it helps us digest food faster.

Okro and egusi is an old time beautiful recipe when cooked correctly it makes mouth watery.

Now that I am done with the brief introductions, let’s get right into how to cook egusi and okro soup

INGREDIENTS

1½ cups egusi 

¼ cup dried pepper( ata gbigbe)

3 tablespoons crayfish powder

8 cooked chicken cuts

4 hake fish cuts

4 pieces ponmo (cowskin)

1 cup chicken stock

1 teaspoon chicken seasoning

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup palm oil

3 cups water

30 okro

PREPARATION

• Pour the okro into a clean bowl of water and clean it to remove dirts or sand
• Get a grater and grate the okro to your desired size, you can also use a food processor, blender and even knife to slices the okro to your desired size
• Set grated okro aside
• Get another clean bowl of water
• Put the fish cuts into the bowl of water
• Clean the fish cuts , remove all the fish intestines, gills and also fish blood
• Clean fish till the water no longer contains blood and set aside
• Blend Egusi and dried pepper to powder using a dry mill and set aside

COOKING PROCEDURE

• Put a clean pot on fire
• Add palm oil and allow it heat up briefly
• Pour the blended egusi and pepper powder in to the hot oil
• Fry briefly for about 1 – 3 minutes
• Scoop out the fried egusi into a bowl and set aside
• Pour 3 cups of water into the pot used for frying the egusi
• Add the cleaned hake fish, ponmo and cooked chicken cuts
• Add crayfish powder, salt, chicken seasoning and chicken stock
• Cover and cook for 5-7 minutes
• After 7 minutes, remove the fishes and set aside
• Add the fried egusi paste
• Mix well and cook for 10 minutes
• After 10 minutes, mix the soup and taste it to be sure it tastes okay to your preference
• Cover and cook for 10 minutes more
• After 10 minutes. Mix well so that the egusi does not burn because egusi burns fast even if it is not dry
• Add the grated okro and mix well
• After the okro has been properly mixed with the egusi, add the boiled fish that was removed earlier
• Mix gently and cook for 5-7 minutes while leaving the pot uncovered
• After 5-7minutes, SOUP IS READY

 

You can also watch the video of this recipe on Youtube Click Here

COOKING TIPS

1. If you do not have dry mill and you live in Nigeria, you can simply blend the egusi from the market. Many Egusi vendors offer a Value-added service of blending egusi for free. So it is better to take advantage of this and blend your egusi with pepper to save yourself a lot of stress. You can also blend the crayfish with the egusi and pepper at the market.
2. You can also use dried fish instead of fresh fish. If you are using dried fish you may not have to remove the fish before you add the egusi this is because you want the fish to soften a bit more. However, you should remove the dried fish before you add the okro because the mixing may cause the fishes to crumble.

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