Vegetable Soup

Vegetable soup is paired with any of the swallows in Nigeria and served as either lunch or dinner. This recipe shows you how to cook a healthy soup with vegetables (ugu and water leaves) the Nigerian way.

I love this soup for many reasons:

For starters, I made it with vegetables, and those are synonymous with health.

In Nigeria, we combine different vegetables to make different soups.
Okra soup, Afang soup and even edikaikong are different combinations of different veggies.

Veggies are good for the heart and body cells.

That is just why we are making this soup.

I have written a lot in the last few months about Healthy Nigerian foods, check out the article just to learn why this soup should appear more often on your menu.

Ingredients for Vegetable Soup

Big bowl Waterleaves
Big bowl ugu leaves (fluted pumpkin)
Roasted mackerel
1KG or 35 Ounces of Goat meat
1 cup crayfish
6 scotch bonnet peppers
400ml Palm oil
2 seasoning cubes
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons Ground Ofor

Preaparation

Step 1
Slice the water leaves and fluted pumpkin leaves with a kitchen knife, you want them thinly sliced as you can see below.

What you find below is a bowl of fluted pumpkin leaves – vegetables.
This is the equivalent of 12 cups. You should wash ugu (fluted pumpkin) properly before slicing them.

This is a bowl of sliced water leaves – the equivalent of 15 cups.

You can wash the water leaves after slicing them. Wash the leaves properly and transfer into a sieve to strain excess water.

You don’t want too much water in your vegetable soup.

Step 3
Wash the roasted fish, remove center bone and break to smaller bits as you can see below.

Season the goat meat with a teaspoon of salt, sliced onions and two seasoning cubes. Allow the meat to boil, add two cups of water and let the meat cook until it becomes tender and easy to chew.

Pound the scotch bonnet (peppers) and 1 cup of crayfish together. You could blend them if you like. Set aside on a small plate.

How to Cook Vegetable Soup

Step 4

To the boiling meat, add the washed, roasted fish. Allow them to cook until the water dries. Don’t allow it to burn.

Most people don’t like too much water in their vegetable soup, to achieve that, use some tricks – like boiling the meat/fish till the water is almost dried.

Step 5
When the meat cooked and the water is almost completely dried, add the palm oil, 400ml. You need lots of palm oil when you cook vegetable soup.

Step 6
Now you add the vegetables, the water leaves should come first. It should fill the pot, it will go down in 3 minutes as you continue to stir.

You can add the leaves little by little, so it doesn’t fill the pot and become difficult to stir.

After adding all the water leaves, allow it to simmer for 2-4 minutes while you stir occasionally.

Step 7
Add the pounded crayfish and peppers.

Stir all together and taste for salt, add salt to your taste. You don’t want too much salt.

Step 8
Add the ugu leaves (fluted pumpkin) at this point.

Stir in 2 tablespoons of ofor (used as a thickener). Turn properly so it doesn’t form crumbs.

Stir all together and allow the vegetable soup to simmer for three minutes.

That is how to make vegetable soup the Nigerian way. I serve all soups in Nigeria with swallow. There are 4 major types in Nigeria.

Fufu

Eba

Semo

Pounded Yam.

Anyone could be paired with this soup and served as dinner or lunch in a Nigerian home.

Below you find a simpler recipe for vegetable soup and a video I shot while making this soup. David did a great job with the video.