How to prepare egusi soup

Good day guys, today I'm going to be sharing a step by step tutorial on how I prepare egusi soup.

Egusi soup is one of the most popular soup in Nigeria. This is why virtually every Nigerian ethnic group consumes the soup and have different names and methods of preparing the soup. The diverse methods of preparing this soup makes it to appear and taste differently.

However, it is still the same egusi soup. Mind you, I'm an ika lady (delta state) and the soup is called 'ofe-iroro' and our method of preparing egusi soup is by frying with oil and water.

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Ingredients

. Three cups of egusi /melon (ground dry).

. Fresh pepper (ground).

. Two onion bulbs (each chopped separately).

. One or two seeds of tomato (optional).

. Palm oil

. Seasoning cubes.

. Stock fish / dry fish.

. Bitter leaf (thoroughly washed to reduce about 90% of the bitter taste).

. Salt to taste.

. Dried ogiri / dawadawa (optional).

. Beef / goat meat / chicken.

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Procedures

. The first thing you should do is to prepare the stock.
However to prepare the stock, here is what you should do:

i) season your meat in a clean pot using an onion bulb, salt and a seasoning cube. (for this soup, I seasoned my 2kg of beef with 2 magi cubes).

ii) Add a little water.

iii) Allow to cook for 5 minutes.

iv) Add your stock fish or dry river fish and allow to cook for another 5 minutes. The aim of this is to allow the taste of the fish to be in your stock.

v) Set aside.

. Pour the ground egusi in a bowl.

. Add your ground pepper with a little water (enough to make the mixture pasty).

. Mix to form a thick paste.

. In another pot, pre-heat and pour the quantity of palm oil you desire. (you should note that the appearance of the soup depends greatly on d quantity of palm oil used.) however I used about five cooking spoon of palm oil for three cups of melon.

. Allow the oil to heat up lightly (do not bleach).

. Add the other chopped onion bulb and allow to fry for about 30seconds.

. Add half cup of water, cover the pot and allow to boil for about a minute.

. Scoop the egusi paste bit by bit using a cooking spoon into the frying mixture.

. Add half a cup of water or less and

. Allow to heat up for about 5 minutes while stirring gently to avoid burning.

. You would notice the egusi gradually becoming lumpy, now, that's the result of water frying the egusi.

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Alternatively,

. Form some molds with the egusi paste

. And fry without water for about 5 minutes, while stirring gently.

. Add some water

. The result of these methods is a slightly lumpy egusi appearing like this:

. Add the stock.

. Add some washed and shredded bitter leaf.

. Add salt to taste.

. Add two cubes of magi (seasoning).

. Pour the blended crayfish

. Stir and allow to cook for about 10minutes on a medium heat.

. Serve hot with any swallow be it eba, fufu, wheat, etc. ( I used semovita)

. You could complement it with a drink

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Conclusion

I'm pretty sure you would be wondering why the 'mould-frying' or 'water-frying'?
Well the reason is to get an egusi soup that is slightly lumpy, not flat or smooth.

Thanks for your time and for reading this post. Do upvote resteem and comment if you find this post interesting and informative.

I remain @ruti - your quintessential being.