Nigerian Egusi Soup Recipe

Creamy, nutty egusi soup is a staple in properties and bukas, or avenue meals stalls, throughout Nigeria and in several parts of West Africa. The soup can take its name from egusi, or agushi―the seeds that the two thicken and flavor it. Egusi soup typically functions meat (these kinds of as beef, smoked poultry, goat, cow skin, and offal) and seafood (smoked dried fish or stockfish), as nicely as awara (Nigerian tofu), mushrooms, and greens. 

Oil-abundant egusi seeds arrive from tiny, difficult environmentally friendly melons speckled with product-coloured places or streaks, which will make them resemble watermelons. Usually referred to as the white-seed melon (cucumeropsis mannii), it’s linked to other cucurbitaceous gourds, melons, and squashes. You may possibly also see it labeled bitter melon (not to be confused with the bitter melon popular to Asian cooking), a reference to its white flesh, which can be marginally bitter.

The seeds are very first extracted from the melon’s flesh then sun-dried until finally their shells switch mustard yellow. After dried, they are stored as-is, deshelled (either by equipment or by hand, a additional prized and expensive approach), or ground into a coarse flour.

The seeds have a wide variety of culinary employs: they can be toasted for a snack ground and pressed to extract a cooking oil blended into nut butter and milled into a flour for baking or thickening soups and stews―I’ve even produced a pesto of sorts with it. Mgbam, a textured protein preferred in jap Nigeria, is produced by combining ground egusi seeds and usu, a mushroom tuber (akin to a truffle but with out the rigorous flavor).

To make egusi soup, I start off by generating a inventory infused with beef, crimson onion, and ground crayfish. Once that is all set, I blend coarsely ground egusi seeds with chopped crimson onion and drinking water to variety a thick, creamy paste, which I dollop into the simmering stock and poach, undisturbed, until eventually the paste congeals. I then give every little thing a stir to split up the paste, producing curds. The completed soup, which can be topped off with a blend of wilted pumpkin and waterleaf greens, eats much more like a stew. You may hear persons say, “I am ingesting soup” or “I’m licking soup,” when taking in egusi these frequent phrases are a nod to its thicker consistency.

Choose be aware that my edition is only a single of many. Across Nigeria, egusi soup may differ from location to location and palate to palate. You can expect to obtain differences in the proteins, seasoning, and greens utilized, and, additional importantly, in the way the egusi by itself is geared up. For instance, a pal of mine from the east shared his recipe for a creamier type of egusi in which the ground seeds  are stirred into the inventory and cooked, resulting in an even, creamy consistency he finishes the soup with delicate herbs that include levels of freshness and flavor. In contrast, Egusi Ijebu from the southwest of Nigeria is in the same way creamy but makes use of toasted and floor egusi seeds, has tomatoes in the stock, and omits the greens. 

Egusi soup is frequently paired with swallows (delicate cooked doughs made from roots, tubers, greens, flours, and far more) like eba, fufu, and pounded yam (think mashed potatoes with out seasoning, so the sweet pleasant flavors of the yam glow as a result of). You can also serve egusi with white rice (normally parboiled prolonged-grain), dodo (fried plantains), and other starchy preparations, these types of as boiled yam or plantain, or appreciate it on its individual.