Family Recipe: How To Prepare The Rivers State “Native Soup”

The Rivers State people of south-south Nigeria are indigenes of a riverine community, so fishing and gathering other fresh sea foods comes with the territory and they have used this advantage to create the most tantalising meals that cause the taste buds of the natives and other people from other parts of Nigeria to water at the sight oft their soups in particular. Popular among such soups is their “Native soup”.

But you do not have to break a bank to prepare this soup if you are not a fisherman. You can cut down on some of the ingredients but whatever you do, make sure you add clams because it adds a lot of flavour to the soup.

The local name for the soup is odu fulo or guru fulo.

Below are the ingredients for making the popular native soup, the list would serve about 6×2 people. You can increase or decrease the quantity of each ingredient depending on the number people would be eating your food.

You can make this soup as simple as possible, if you can’t find the clams and prawns where you live, you can leave them out.

Ingredients

1KG of meat
10 pieces of stock fish ear
2 cups of sliced Uziza leaves
2 medium size dry fish
6 medium sized cocoyam for thickener
15-20cl of palm oil
2-3 cubes of seasoning
1-2 cups of periwinkles
1-2 cups of clams
1 cup of ground crayfish
Salt and pepper to taste.
two handful of fresh prawns
2 spoons of Ofor (alternative thickener)

Step 1

Start by parboiling your meat with all necessary spices, then set aside the stock water. Stock water is very essential to cooking Nigerian meals.

Step 2
While your meat is cooking, use the time to prepare the other ingredients; wash and slice the uziza leaves. Peel your cocoyam, cut them into chunks, then pound or blend raw.

Soak the stock fish and dry fish with boiled water and wash thoroughly to remove sand and bones. Grind the crayfish and fresh pepper also, you can grind together or grind separately.

Step 3
Add the washed dry fish/stock fish in the boiling meat on fire, after about 30 minutes or more of cooking just the meat. Once they are soft and the water is almost dried (about 1 cup left) add about 5-7 cups of water, palm oil and the ground crayfish.

Allow the soup to cook for another ten minutes before adding salt to taste, 1 cube of your preferred seasoning.

Step 4
Add the washed/cleaned clams, stir, add the cocoyam, allow to dissolve in 8-10 minutes, if it is still very watery you can add a spoon of ofor, cook for three minutes before adding the periwinkles, prawns and sliced uziza leaves which is likely the last ingredient while making River state native soup.

Allow to simmer for another five minutes and you just made Nigerian’s most popular native soup.

Tip: If your cocoyam thickens your soup to desired consistency, you will not need to add the Ofor.

Recipe Source: allnigerianfoods.com, Photo credit: Google