How To Cook Okro Vegetable Soup4 min read

Okro Vegetable soup as it’ s popularly known in Nigeria is one of the most easily prepared meal to eat for lunch as well as dinner. This meal is popularly known among Nigerians but it is eaten mostly in the southern and Eastern part of Nigeria. The soup could be eaten with any swallow of your choice, like amala, semo, pounded yam/poundo, wheat or garri etc.

Although Okro is a vegetable on it’ s own, it’ s called Okro Vegetable because of the extra vegetable leaves that are added to it to make it more nutritious and reduce a bit of the calories/Fatty content in it, making it a healthy food and as we know, healthy food is also healthy living.

Today, I will be teaching you guys how to prepare this wonderful delicacy, in Nigeria there are different ways to prepare this meal but today I will be showing you how I prepare the Okro Vegetable soup. Stay back And relax feel free to try this method out too, I promise you won’ t regret it.

1. Fresh water

2. Vegetable of your choice, preferably Pumpkin Leave popularly known as Ugwu Leave or Spinach.

3. Palm oil

4. Stock Fish

5. Bonga Fish

6. Smoked fish

7. Fresh Pepper ( Red Ball pepper)

8. Red Meat or Beef (This also depends on your preference, you could also use Turkey or chicken or goat meat. Like I said it depends on your choice and budget also). But for this soup we will be using Red Meat and chicken.

9. Snails( I personally love snails, like they give a different taste entirely)

10. Salt

11. Grounded Crayfish

12. Onions

13. Seasoning Cube (Maggi Knorr)

14. Okro( This could be grated or chopped, it depends on your choice And the one you think it’ s easier for you and reduces alot of the workload for all lazy Nigeria youth😂).

15. Dried Fish

16. Fresh fish(Tilapia or Scuba). (This also depends on your choice too, you could even use any other kind of edible fish that is not listed here, but for me I prefer tilapia fish but where I live currently, tilalia fish isn’ t easy to come by so my second choice will be the scuba fish, I prefer this fish because it has lesser bones and they can also be picked out easily too, which makes it’ s also easy for the children lesser than 5 years of age to eat.

Yes! , I forgot to mention this earlier on, this is also one of the nicest food you can start with when weaning your babies and preparing them to start solid foods.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Get a clean pot and lid that covers tightly, rinse it with clean water, hygiene is very important. Put your stock fish, dried Fish, chopped onions, one Knorr maggi cube one and a half cup of water. The water added depends on the size of your measuring cup, but the water should not be too much, at least it should be with the same height of where the stockfisgh and dried Fish are in the pot. Now, we have to be very careful about the water here because we don’ t want our soup to be watering. Allow to heat up for 15/20mins.

2. Now we have to steam up our meat and chicken, you could use different pots to do this or you could also use one pot, well this is when you understand the time difference and know when to add the other but for this we will be using one pots to steam it. . .

3. We steam up the meat first because it’ s more tougher than the chicken, add two cube of Knorr maggi and chopped onions allow to boil for about 10mins, then you add the chicken and salt, if you want to marinate the chicken before adding it to make it more tasty. . . it’ s really nice but you have to be very careful so you don’ t make it too spicy. Now we have our steamed chicken and beef. Let’ s proceed.

4. Put your snail in a boil, add enough water to cover it and add two to three pebbles of alum and let it settle for about 5 to 10mins. but this depends on the quantity of snail you have. The alum helps to clean the snail out without you having to do Anything tedious but I like washing and changing the water then adding a extra pebble of alum till I feel it’ s ok to use. That aside

5. By this time ensure the okro is already grated or chopped as you like it and the fresh pepper has been blended or chopped, anyone you prefer.

6. Now, everything should be half done by now, then we add the chicken and meat stock to the prepared stock fish, then we stir and allow to mix and heat up well for about 2mins then we add our properly washed snail and fresh fish and leave to cool for about 10 mins.

7. Then we separate the assorted from the stock and leave it in a drain then going back to our stock we add our blended/chopped pepper and the palm oil and we leave it to boil up for about 2 to 3 mins.

8. Now we add our okro, immediately you add, you stir till you make sure there is no lump and leave it for about 2mins, then we add our assorted(Beef, Chicken, snail and fish) into the okro soup and stir, leave for 2mins for everything to merge and boil up, then add your chopped vegetable, stir and put off the gas. The steam will do the rest. Tada! ! ! . . . Food is ready.

You can eat this soup with any type of swallow, be it fufu, Eba, amala or wheat. Trust me, you will enjoy every bit of this once you have tried it out.