Food Chronicles: Okro Soup

Hi dolls... So this is completely out of my comfort zone but I promised to share this post and a lot of people are counting on me so...

If you know me, you would know I'm a very picky eater. Its easier to count the things I eat and scratch off everything else from that list than to ask what I don't eat.

I'm not big on African soups. In short, I don't eat any soup (Egusi, Okro, Afang, Ogbono, Edikiakong, Banga, Owo, Efo, Waterleaf etc) but not eating something does not mean you shouldn't know how to cook it.

I can only touch swallow and by swallow I mean garri with Okro & stew. There is a difference between Okro & stew and Okro soup.

I decided to make okro soup with the help of my fave food blog afrolems but added a few of my own little touches.


Ingredients:

Okro

Bitter leaf (not compulsory)

Spinach

Maggi

Palm Oil

Ground Crayfish

Bell Peppers or Tatashe (not compulsory)

Dry Pepper

Scotch Bonnet

Meat (cowleg or lamb, or goat or honeycomb or cow meat) or Fish (your choice)

Salt

Water

Preparation:

Note that everyone has a different method of cooking this soup. Please feel free to share your recipes too.

One thing I love about cooking in Nigeria is the fact that you have help to chop, wash etc. When I'm away from home, I have to do everything myself but I guess that's the fun part about cooking *rolling eyes*.

When I cook, I don't restrict myself with measurements, I just know the quantity to add depending on the amount of people you are cooking for.

I started by washing the lamb, oxtail and honeycomb or shaki as most people call it. Then I boiled it with maggi and salt.

While the meat was boiling, I cut my okro into pieces by diving it into four before chopping. I also blended the bell peppers with the scotch bonnet and washed the bitter leaf.

When the meat was half way cooked, I added the blended bell pepper mix with the ground crayfish, dry pepper. After a while, I added the bitterleaf with the palm oil and let it simmer with the meat mix.

After a while, I reduced the heat and added my chopped okro and stirred it in once. I left it to cook uncovered and on low heat for another 5 minutes before adding the chopped spinach last.

After adding the spinach, I turned off the heat and served the soup with garri (eba) for my brother and his friends. 

Result:

Iphone picture!!!

It looks meaty in this picture but I promise there is soup in there. My brother's only complaint was the bitter leaf (apparently he isn't a big fan of it) but other than that he says it was spot on!!!

Hope this post was helpful!!!

Bisous...xxx

Note: Most of the pics are not mine, they were collected from google. only the soup pic is mine.