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Soups are basically served alongside either eba, fufu, pounded yam or even rice. Yes, I have eaten rice with egusi soups before, not entirely delicious but some Nigerians like it.
What I am saying is that soup in Nigeria is never eaten alone except in rare cases even though it does you no harm if you eat (we say lick) just a plate of soup but it would be like just licking a plate of tomato stew without the accompanying rice or yam.
Having established the fact that Nigerian soups are not served alone, I want to commence with the topic of the day.
There are different kind of soups made in Nigeria of which egusi soup happens to be the most popular and widely eaten. This soup is very popular because it could be made in different recipes by different Nigerian tribes. Nigeria as a country is made up of over 200 tribes and ethnic group, hence, the reason for the wide range of foods eaten in Nigeria.
I am going to make a list of some popular Nigerian soups and then concentrate on how to prepare the popular Efik vegetable soup - Edikaikong.
The word Edikaikong is an Efik way of saying vegetable soup.
Names of Nigerian soups.
Egusi Soup
Uha soup
Bitter leaves Soup
Ewedu
Efo Riro
Gbegiri
Okra soup
And here is how to make Nigerian popular vegetable soup edikaikong
The following are the ingredients for making Nigerian edikaikong soup, the ingredients below would serve close to ten people. You are free to increase or decrease depending on the number of people you are looking to serve and of course their stomach size.
2 kg of goat meat
Sliced fluted pumpkin (a large bowl full)
Sliced water leaves (a large bowl full)
2 cups of periwinkles (optional)
Palm oil (about 25cl)
Dry fish (2 medium sizes)
1 cup of crayfish
Salt and pepper to taste.
I like to make edikaikong and most of my soups with goat meat so here we go.
You probably start by parboiling the meat with all the necessary ingredients, I like to parboil meat with just a bulb of onion, a cube of maggi, salt and few other Nigerian spices. The good thing is that you can choose your spices depending on taste and choice of aroma.
Allow meat to parboil for five t ten minutes before going any further. Add more water and the hot-water-washed dry fish, It is very necessary to wash dry fish with hot water before adding to your soup, this way you would be able to wash off embedded sand. You need to also know that you don't need
Lots of water for this soup. In fact the water needs to be dried before you add the vegetables.
Now you are almost ready for the major part in making edikaikong, the efik popuilar vegetable soup.
Allow the dry fish and meat to cook very well until the water is almost completely dried but don't allow to burn. Add about 25cl of red oil (palm oil), add ground crayfish, pepper, salt to taste.
Stir all together and add your vegetables, the water levels should go first, followed by the fluted pumpkin which should come two to three minutes after the water leaves. Cook the vegetables together for about three minutes and you just made a delicious pot of edikaikong.
Like I said earlier, edikaikong is a popular Efik vegetable soup but now cooked and served in all popular Nigerian restaurants and eateries.
