The Famous Native Soup of Rivers State And How To Prepare It.- Travis Kwent

Pursuant to our publication of the Undisputed King of Street Food, Boli and Fish, our gourmet enthusiasts have been pressing for more Rivers State meals and we are not cut out to disappoint and today we look at the darling of the Rivers People the ” Native Soup”. If you have ever been to this neck of the wood and never tasted the Native Soup, you were never here. How could you?

Anyways you have one more life line and a fortuitous chance to redeem your missing out self.

Today’s rendition you get to know how it is made and get a cool recipe to try at home.

The Native Soup is the coolest soup around the Niger Delta,especially Rivers State and Port Harcourt in particular, rich in flavour, healthy spices and protein enriched. The historical narrative is a bit far fetched and we have all the natives laying claims, from the Ikwerres to the Okirikas and kalabaris but let us stick to the savoring of the mouth watering flavor. I see, you are drooling already.

As my Warri Folks will say, leave wetin them write for motor enter motor go ya way. Okay, now that we are done with historicity and histrionics in the garbage bin, let us get down to the ABCs of the Native Soup.

How To Make Rivers State Native Soup

Below are the ingredients for making the famous native soup. Some people may find some of the ingredients pricey and trim their recipe( especially the protein requirements in keeping with the recession unless you had seen fit to fork out more Naira for the Stock fish and bush meat, you would have lived forever in the dark rueing what the real native really tasted like

REQUIRED INGREDIENTS

All these and more can be purchased at your local fresh food market near you.
2 Medium size dry fish
7 balls of Cocoyam (Ede,Colocasia esculenta) as thickener(cooked and pounded into paste)
15-20cl of Palm oil
2-3 cubes of Maggi or knorr( your preference)
2 cups of Periwinkles
2 cups of Ngolo
1 cup of Ground crayfish
2 cups of sliced Uziza leaves Salt and pepper to taste.
2 cups or 2 handful of fresh Prawns or Shrimps
2KG of Meat( Bush meat,Cow Leg,Oxtail,Snail,Cow head etc).
12 pieces of stock fish ear (Nti okporoko)

PREPARATION

STEP 1:
Wash clean and parboil the shrimps/prawns in a small pot of boiling water,adding Maggi,one cube as it is already with natural salt and cook for 4 minutes, decapitate it and drain the water and put in clean bowl.
Prepare your meat, wash clean, and parboil in a large pot add 2 cubes of Maggi, 1 bulb of Onion, Salt for taste and a dash of fresh pepper. Some meat do take time to cook,say about 45-50 minutes but with pressure cooker you can cut the time to lesser period.
This time frame gives you ample time to quickly prepare other ingredients. Quickly Wash and slice the Uziza leaves. Grind the crayfish and fresh pepper also, you can grind together or grind separately.

Step 2
Soak the stock fish and dry fish with boiled water and wash thoroughly to remove sand and debone it.

Step 3
Add the washed dry fish/stock fish in the boiling meat on fire, after about 30-50 minutes 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 another8-12 minutes before adding salt to taste.

Step 4
Add the cleaned Ngolo, stir, add the Cocoyam(Ede),which acts as thickener allow to dissolve in 8-10 minutes, if it is still very watery add more paste, cook for three minutes before adding the periwinkles, Shrimps or prawn and Uziza leaves which is like the last ingredient of the native soup. Allow to simmer for another five minutes and turn off the heat.

Voila! There you have it. The famous native soup. You can eat it with any swallow, Garri,Semolina,Wheat,Poundo yam flour or Ground rice and wash it down with any fresh fruit juice or just iced water.

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