Nigerian Okro Soup - With Ugu

The okro soup recipe is one of the major Nigerian soup recipes everyone looks forward to learning as the sight of a perfectly made okra soup can make one salivate.

Okro soup is the combination of different veggies, of which the okro itself is the main ingredient, including other types of vegetables like the fluted pumpkin leaf (popularly known as ugu leaf), bitter leaf, onions, and others.

Okro Soup Ingredients

• Okro
• Palm oil
• Ugu leaf
• Seasonings (salt, curry, thyme, maggi, etc)
• Red bell pepper (rodo)
• Potassium
• Protein ( I will use meat for this recipe).

These are all the ingredients needed for this special Nigerian soup recipe.

How to make okro soup

Step 1

The first step is to prepare your protein.

Wash and put your meat, chicken, or turkey in a pot.

Dice a bulb of onion in it and add a reasonable amount of seasonings into it and add a half cup of water.

Place the pot containing your meat on fire with medium heat and let it cool until tender.

Preparing okro soup with fresh fish

If you're looking to know how to prepare okro soup with fresh fish, then simply follow this quick step in preparing your fish for the soup.

- Wash your fish thoroughly and set aside

- Place the fish in a pot and season it correctly

- Pour in half a cup of water and allow it to parboil for a few minutes (be careful not to make it too soft)

- Once done, remove the fish from the pot and set both the fish and the stock aside.

Once your fish or meat is getting cooked, mince the red bell pepper and set it aside.

Step 2

This next step is the preparation of your okro itself

• Rinse your okro thoroughly and cut it into small pieces
• Place your already cut okro in a pot and add a pinch of potassium to it, a small amount of water and start stirring.
• Pour in a small quantity of your protein stock, to give it the right taste.
• Pour in the minced red bell pepper and let it cool for a while
• Add the parboiled protein, shrimps, and crayfish, and keep stirring
• Add a small quantity of palm oil to it.
• Afterward, wash and add your pumpkin leaf to it and allow it to cook for a while. (This is preparing okro soup with ugu)
• Take away from heat immediately and serve.

NOTE

- The act of stirring the okro in this soup recipe is important to avoid making the okro spill over.

- It's important to be very careful when preparing okro soup with fresh fish. This is because it's possible to mistakenly piece all the fish in the stew in the course of stirring.

- Adding potassium to your okro help to quickly soften it, as well as to make it slimier and better for consumption, though you may decide to skip this.

Okro soup with ogbono

The combination of okro and ogbono is mind-blowing, but only a few can cook this soup combo without getting confused.

Ogbono is a draw soup just like okro soup, the only difference is that it's not a vegetable, and may not require much effort like that of okro soup, though the cooking process is the same.

When cooking okro soup with ogbono, one is required to add the already blended ogbono into the okro from the beginning. This is so because both of them need to be properly cooked to enjoy it.

Okro soup with eba

Nothing goes well with a big plate of okra soup than eba, most especially the one made with yellow garri.

How to make eba

- Boil a desirable amount of water

- Pour out the hot water in a bowl and add your preferred garri into the water.

- Turn the garri properly as you add it to the hot water

If you implement this correctly, your eba should look like the one in the picture below.