The fastest way to a man's heart, is it's stomach the popular Nigeria adage says. Cooking apart from being a flier is a cultural tenet's to an average Nigeria home. Nigerian cuisine consists of dishes or food items from the hundreds of ethnic groups that comprise Nigeria. Like other West African cuisines, it uses spices and herbs with palm or groundnut oil to create deeply flavored sauces and soups, some of the popular Nigeria dishes include egusi soup, pepper soup, Banga soup, pounded yam, Akara etc. I would be educating you on my favorite dish Banga Soup
What is Banga soup ?
Palm-nut soup as it's called by non Nigerian, is a soup made from Palm fruit. With origin traced to the Urhobo community of Nigeria, but widely loved by all.
Ingredients
- 1kg palm fruits or 800g tinned Palm Fruit Concentrate
- Beef: are usually choiced by many but most preferably you can use assortment meat of your choice like tripe, cow-leg, or any other beef part of your choice.
- Seafood: Fresh Shrimps, crayfish, catfish, stockfish (dried cod), dry fish, periwinkles. These are some seafood options that you can use.
- Vegetable: scent leave for Ofe Akwu or dried and crushed bitter leaves for Delta-style Banga Soup.
- 2 medium onions: a vegetable and an essential aromatic to spice the dish.
- Pepper: a sweetener and a rich form of heat. Their various species of pepper you can go for your choice
- Salt: a sweetener for taste.
- Ogiri Okpei (Iru) (seasoning mix): all to spice the dish.
- 1 - 2 big stock/water: The palm nut concentrate is quite thick, water is needed to loosen it up a bit. recovered beef stock can be added to boost the taste of the soup. If you don’t have any stock you can add a little more seasoning powder (stock cube).
Preparation process
. Boil the palm kernel fruit for 30 minutes until it becomes soft.
. Transfer the nuts into a mortar and pound gently, making sure you don’t break the nuts.
. Pour some hot water over the pounded nuts, squeeze and use a sieve to strain out the extract – do this a couple of times until you get all the extract from the nut.
. Wash and cut the Vegetable (pumpkin,scent leave) into tiny pieces. The Vegetable give the Banga soup its unique look and taste.
. Cook the beef and the dry fish with 1 bulb of diced onion and the stock cubes till done.
. Cut the remaining bulb of onion. Pound the crayfish, ogiri okpei and pepper in a mortar and set aside. You can also grind them with a dry mill.
. Pour the extract in a pot and boil until it thickens and the oil rises to the top.
Conclusion
As tidious as the process of preparing Banga soup appear, It's equally highly nutrious and dietary and the taste is super indictive. Banga soup can be eaten with many Africa native dishes like Amala, Eba, Fufu and rice. You can't beat the reach, give it a try today.