Okra soup is one of the most popular Nigerian soup, many Nigerians like this soup because it is very easy to prepare and likely the cheapest soup in Nigeria, it costs just about 2 dollars to prepare.

Below is the list of ingredients that you can use in the process, you can always increase or reduce depending on the number of the person you are looking to feed and of course their stomach sizes.

Ingredients For Okra (Okro) soup

Okra (a medium size bowl full)

Fluted Pumpkin leaves (as desired) optional – I don’t use it.

Stock fish head (medium size)

1 kg of meat (beef, chicken, turkey, etc)

2 medium sizes of dry fishes (optional)

Or Roasted fish (optional)

2 to 3 cubes of Maggi or knorr (seasoning)

Salt and pepper to taste.

10 to 15cl Red oil

half cup of ground crayfish

Okra Soup Preparation In Nigeria

Slice the okra and set aside in a bowl, the trader in most Nigerian markets can assist you with slicing the okra, but you can also try using a kitchen knife.

If you want to make this soup with just frozen fish, the process is a little bit simpler than using cow meat. You will need to parboil the fish with all the necessary ingredients for five to ten minutes. Then pick out with a fork leaving the extract (water from fish after cooking) in the pot, add two cups of water also, then the hot-water-washed stock fish and dry fish.

But if you are making this soup with cow meat you would want to parboil the meat with all necessary ingredients, I like to parboil meat with lots of ingredients and then use very few ingredients while making the real soup, it is likely that the whole ingredient would be left in the meat extract (meat water) after parboiling. Parboil with only ingredients for about ten minutes then add about two cups of water and cook till the meat is tender.

Add the stock fish and dry fish, cook for about 15 to 20 minutes till they are soft for consumption. At this point you can add the parboiled or roasted fish if you are making okra soup with fish.

Cook for 5 minutes before adding palm oil, crayfish, 1 or 2 cubes maggi (seasoning), pepper and salt to taste. You will find a tasteful soupy combination. You can add the ground ogbolo at this point if you are making a combination of Okra and Ogbolo soup, it is a good combination even though I don’t do it often.

Add the okra five minutes after the ogbolo, stir, and cook for about 3 minutes before adding the leaves (optional), you can use fluted pumpkin or the normal pumpkin leaves. Cook for another 3 to five minutes and you can serve with eba, fufu or semo.

You just made a very delicious Nigerian okra soup… uhmmm yummy!!!