To avoid confusion, Cocoyam is the same as taro root. In many Asian countries, it is called Taro while in many African countries such as Nigeria, it is referred to as cocoyam.

But, if you intend to go shopping in a typical Nigerian market, it is necessary that you know the types of cocoyam in Nigeria.

In Nigeria, there are two (2) types of cocoyam namely:

• Red cocoyam
• White Cocoyam.

As the name implies, the red cocoyam has a red-Ish colour when the skin is peeled off and the cocoyam is cooked while the white cocoyam has an off-white colour.

In most cases, these two types of cocoyam are hard to tell apart unless the skin is peeled. This is the reason why you must specifically ask for the type of cocoyam you want when you want to buy cocoyam.

It would interest you to know that, the cocoyam plant is used in making several delicious Nigerian food recipes and I will be stating some of the common recipes for both white and red cocoyam below.

• cocoyam chips
• cocoyam porridge
• cocoyam and beans porridge
• cocoyam and plantain porridge
• boiled cocoyam and pepper sauce
• boiled cocoyam and fried egg

Even cocoyam leaves are used to cook cocoyam soup. Although, I would not be explaining how to cook cocoyam soup in this blog post because this recipe is on how to cook cocoyam porridge.

At a later time, I post the recipe of how to cook cocoyam soup, so ensure you follow this blog so that you will be notified when I post new recipes.

Before I continue with this recipe on how to prepare cocoyam porridge, the below stated are the ingredients you will need for this recipe.

Ingredients for cocoyam porridge

• 3 red cocoyam tubers
• 1/8 cup palm oil
• 1 small onions
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 scotch bonnet (ata rodo)
• 1 Panla fish (smoked hake fish)
• ½ teaspoon salts
• 1 teaspoon seasoning
• Water

I presume you have all your ingredients ready; you can also buy the ingredients above. So, let’s start cooking.

How to prepare cocoyam porridge

• Peel cocoyam tubers with a knife or potato peeler.
• Dispose the cocoyam peels.
• Get a bowl of clean water and rinse the peeled cocoyam.
• Cut the cleaned cocoyam into small sizes and set aside.
• Remove the fish head and the bones in the roasted fish and set the deboned fish aside.
• Slice/chop the onions and set aside.
• Also blend the tomatoes and scotch bonnet to a rough texture and set aside.
• Set your cooker to medium heat and place your pot on it.
• Add palm oil and let it heat up briefly.
• Add the deboned roasted fish
• Mix and fry for 1-2minutes – It is better to cover your pot at this point, this is to avoid kitchen incidents such as the slashing of hot oil or fried fish
• Add onions, blended tomatoes and pepper, salt and seasoning powder.
• Mix well and cook for 2-3minutes on medium heat.
• After 3 minutes, add 1 cup of water to the sauce.
• Mix well and add cocoyam
• Cover the pot and cook till the cocoyam is very soft
• Mash cooked cocoyam to your preference with a spatula or potato masher
• Red cocoyam porridge is ready to be served.

As always, you can also watch the video of this recipe on my YouTube channel and I will appreciate if you Subscribe to my channel and like my videos. Thanks

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