morsels45

morsels45 said

Egusi soup

Ground melon seed, greens and palm oil, thick enough to eat with your hands.

Egusi soup
Photo: Zz411 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. A photo of the dish, not of these exact recipes.

That was somebody else’s answer. Yours takes about twenty seconds: a handful of either-ors, then one dish.

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How to make egusi soup

2 genuinely different takes — a classic, and a faster or lighter route. The same ones the app hands you once you have decided.

Thick, with greens

75 minutes · serves 6 · Medium

What you need

  • 300g ground egusi (melon seed)
  • 500g beef or goat, pre-boiled
  • 200g smoked fish, flaked
  • 150ml palm oil
  • 2 onions
  • 3 tbsp ground crayfish
  • 2 scotch bonnets
  • 400g spinach or bitterleaf
  • 1 stock cube

What you do

  1. 1Mix the ground egusi with a little water into a stiff paste and leave it while you start the base.
  2. 2Bleach the palm oil gently — heat it until it thins and lightens, no more — then fry the blended onion and pepper in it for 10 minutes.
  3. 3Drop the egusi paste in in lumps and do not stir for 5 minutes. Letting it fry in lumps is what gives the soup its texture; stirring it in makes a smooth sauce, which is a different dish.
  4. 4Meat, fish, crayfish and stock in. Simmer 25 minutes, breaking the lumps up a little as you go.
  5. 5Greens in for the last 5 minutes only. With pounded yam or fufu.

Smaller, without the goat

45 minutes · serves 4 · Easy

What you need

  • 200g ground egusi
  • 300g beef
  • Smoked fish
  • Palm oil
  • Onion, scotch bonnet
  • Crayfish
  • Spinach

What you do

  1. 1As above, with a single meat and a shorter simmer.
  2. 2Spinach in at the very end.