In My Kitchen: Egusi Soup

Finally my Egusi soup is yellow!

Now to some this might seem like a bit of strange statement to make but I know how to make Egusi soup, or at least I thought I did. However today was my 4th attempt and it actually looked {and tasted} like how my mum makes it!

I think the main issue has been using the wrong ingredients, as up until now I have been making it without Palm Oil. Now I’ve never been a fan of palm oil and neither is my mum, hence why I have never made soup with it. {Mum makes her own version of palm oil!}. The thing about palm oil, is that if you get a poor quality brand it can really affect the taste of the food and also leave quite a nasty waxy after taste. So up until now I have avoided even purchasing it, as I wasn’t even sure what sort to buy.

In its place I have substituted chopped tomato in oil, tomato puree in oil. But each time whilst the taste isn’t bad per se, it looked very red and tasted very tomato-like. In my naivety I thought the yellow colour you see above was down to the egusi, when in fact it’s the palm oil. On one occasion I wasted an awful lot of egusi trying to make my chopped tomato/puree concoction yellow!

Over the new year holiday I was introduced to a brand of Palm Oil by my Aunt.

Entering Golden Sun Nigerian Palm Oil…

I used this today and the results are as above! Really pleased with the texture and consistency of the oil as well as how the soup turned out and tasted.

For those who wish to recreate the delicious Egusi Soup, I have included a recipe below. Please note that my recipe is approximated as I don’t ever measure what I use {except the very first time} and make every soup from sight and taste – your mother will tell you the same! But it should give you an idea.

Ingredients used:

• Large pieces of Meat/Chicken
• 1 onion
• 2 Garlic gloves
• 4 maggie cubes
• 25g Crayfish ground
• 50g Egusi ground
• 100ml water
• 125ml palm oil
• Spinach - chopped

1. In a pot boil the meat {mutton, beef, chicken} until slightly tender. Spice with a little salt.

2. In a blender, mix together with the water the onion, garlic, maggie cubes, crayfish and egusi. My egusi and crayfish were already ground, but I preferred to mix it all in with the other ingredients.

3. In a separate pot heat around 125ml of palm oil. Add to it the mixture from step 2 and keep stirring. At this point you will start to see the mixture turn from the red/orange palm oil colour, to a more yellow colour.

4. Pour in the almost cooked meat, along with the water that it was cooking in {nice stock!} and add any extra spices. I added pepper, thyme, chilli powder and salt. What spices you include is really your own personal taste.

5. Leave to cook for around 20 mins or so, adding water if you feel it is too thick. The overall consistency shouldn’t be too watery.

5. Add spinach and leave to simmer for a final 5-10 mins. You don’t want to overcook the spinach otherwise it loses all its goodness.

6. Serve with Pounded Yam, Semolina, Gari

Yummy!

If you have any tips or methods to improve this recipe, please let me know in comments. Happy to try and feed back.