There are different tribes and each tribes with their own traditional dish. I'm from the southern part of Nigeria and we have different traditional dishes, one of them is Banga soup which we call Ofe Akwu.
Growing up with my mom, I learnt how to prepare this wonderful delicacy. I don't think there's any woman from the Igbos who doesn't know how to prepare this soup. Back in those days, Banga soup has been used as a medicinal soup. It has a lot of health benefits which our parents used when there was nothing like hospital or doctors.
Health Benefits Of Banga Soup
Banga soup contains good value of calories fat and protein, it is also rich in minerals. Banga soup contains a lot of vitamins and it is also believe to heal people with high fever. Most importantly, it is very low in fat and as such, it is a healthy food that can be consumed by all.
Most diabetic patient finds it hard to choose a food that will be fit for their health, Banga soup is one of the best meal I will recommend for a diabetic patient. You can use Eko/Agidi if you're wondering what will go well with the soup. Eko/Agidi is called corn jellos, it is made from corn. Though it might be tasteless, but it's good for diabetics patients. The Yorubas call it Eko while the Igbos call it Agidi.
Ingredients Used In Preparing Banga Soup
- Fresh pepper
- dry pepper
- ripe palm nut
- assorted meat
- crayfish
- dry fish
- periwinkle
- Big crayfish
- Maggie and salt
- beletete
- Banga spicies
Procedures in preparing Banga soup
You can either start with cooking your meat or cooking the palm nuts. I started by boiling my meat after washing them with a clean water and adding meat seasoning to it which includes: Maggie, salt, onion and dry pepper. The meat was allowed to cook for some minutes before putting it down.
While the meat was on fire, I made my ingredients ready. I had to wash the fresh pepper and crayfish with a clean water. I took my time to was the crayfish especially the big ones because most times you might find sand on it, so you have to wash them properly. I also made the periwinkle ready by washing them with a clean water too.
Of course, I didn't forget to wash the dry fish. To do this you have to he patient because it's requires enough skills to do so. You have to gently remove the Borns from it without being injured and you also need to was with call to remove all dirt from it. Some people will like to get their ingredients ready before starting any thing, which ever way, it's still fine.
Once the meat is ready, the next thing is to wash your palm nuts with clean water then cook till it's soft enough to pound. There was no molter at my sister's house so i had to improvise. After pounding, you have to use clean water to get the extract from the palm nuts.
This is how the extract will look like. When you have gotten the quantity of extract you need for the soup, the next is to start cooking your soup which I did. I allowed the extract to boil for few minutes before adding some of my ingredients such as Beletete, meat, Banga spicies, then was allowed to boil for sometime before adding the rest of the ingredients.
After cooking for sometime, you will get something like this. This is the final stage of the preparation, at This stage, your soup is ready to be consumed. You can use anything to eat with it. For the diabetic patient, you can use corn jellos, while others can use starch, fufu, pounded yam or Eba to eat with it.
This soup was prepared by me when I went to visit my sister at her house, she wanted to eat my food as it's been long since she last ate my meal, so she came up with Banga soup. At that period I had issues with my phone so I had to use her phone to snap the pictures and I told her to save it that I will need it someday.
When I saw the task given to us, I remembered I once saved some pictures on my sister's phone so I asked her to send me the pictures which she did.
Thanks for reading