Nigerian Egusi Soup Recipe

Creamy, nutty egusi soup is a staple in houses and bukas, or street meals stalls, throughout Nigeria and in a lot of areas of West Africa. The soup normally takes its name from egusi, or agushi―the seeds that both thicken and taste it. Egusi soup usually capabilities meat (these as beef, smoked poultry, goat, cow skin, and offal) and seafood (smoked dried fish or stockfish), as effectively as awara (Nigerian tofu), mushrooms, and greens. 

Oil-loaded egusi seeds appear from little, hard green melons speckled with product-colored spots or streaks, which makes them resemble watermelons. Frequently referred to as the white-seed melon (cucumeropsis mannii), it’s similar to other cucurbitaceous gourds, melons, and squashes. You may perhaps also see it labeled bitter melon (not to be bewildered with the bitter melon widespread to Asian cooking), a reference to its white flesh, which can be slightly bitter.

The seeds are initial extracted from the melon’s flesh then sun-dried till their shells change mustard yellow. The moment dried, they are saved as-is, deshelled (either by device or by hand, a much more prized and pricey approach), or ground into a coarse flour.

The seeds have a wide range of culinary uses: they can be toasted for a snack floor 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 types with it. Mgbam, a textured protein preferred in jap Nigeria, is manufactured by combining floor egusi seeds and usu, a mushroom tuber (akin to a truffle but without the powerful taste).

To make egusi soup, I commence by making a inventory infused with beef, purple onion, and ground crayfish. The moment that is prepared, I mix coarsely ground egusi seeds with chopped purple onion and h2o to type a thick, creamy paste, which I dollop into the simmering inventory and poach, undisturbed, right until the paste congeals. I then give every thing a stir to split up the paste, making curds. The finished soup, which can be topped off with a mix of wilted pumpkin and waterleaf greens, eats more like a stew. You may possibly hear people today say, “I am taking in soup” or “I am licking soup,” when feeding on egusi these popular phrases are a nod to its thicker consistency.

Acquire observe that my edition is only a person of several. Across Nigeria, egusi soup varies from location to region and palate to palate. You will come across dissimilarities in the proteins, seasoning, and greens utilized, and, far more importantly, in the way the egusi alone is prepared. For occasion, a close friend of mine from the east shared his recipe for a creamier model 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 sensitive herbs that incorporate layers of freshness and taste. In distinction, Egusi Ijebu from the southwest of Nigeria is likewise creamy but utilizes toasted and floor egusi seeds, has tomatoes in the inventory, and omits the greens. 

Egusi soup is frequently paired with swallows (delicate cooked doughs manufactured from roots, tubers, greens, flours, and much more) like eba, fufu, and pounded yam (believe mashed potatoes with out seasoning, so the sweet pleasant flavors of the yam shine by). You can also provide egusi with white rice (generally parboiled lengthy-grain), dodo (fried plantains), and other starchy preparations, this kind of as boiled yam or plantain, or take pleasure in it on its possess.