black soup

Black soup is a popular and tasteful Edo (Benin) soup, it is quite delicious and easy to prepare. This turned out really delcious, I love it and I’m guessing you are gonna love it too.
I have been exploring foods by other Nigerian ethnic groups and today we are gonna be making the popular edo (esan) black soup.

It really doesn’t matter your language or ethnic group, if you try this soup and get it right, you are going to have the same experience as those that have been enjoying it for ages.

Most people complain about the dark color, it gets the color from the ground leaves.

What you find below is delicious plate of black soup, the exact way it is made by Edo people, most people focus on the color and forget that it is really not all about the color. It is super tasty and very nutitious.

There are three basic leaves for making this delicious soup. While some argue extensively that only two are important, it is obvious that all of the three are neccessary. These leaves are actually ground together with the native edo grinding stone or the electric blender.

Some people make black soup with just Bitter leaf and effirin (scent leaf) while others prefer it the exact way I prepared it. I really this this is way better than every other combination 😀

The ingredients include:
2 cups of Washed bitter leaves
Half cup of sliced Scent leaves
2 cups of sliced uziza leaves
300g of roasted fish
1kg of assorted meat.
half cup of ground crayfish
Ground Pepper to taste
4 cube of knorr.
7 pieces of stock fish ear
4 cups of palm fruit sauce.
Salt to taste.
Serving: 6

Here are some of the ingredients that I used while making this delicious black soup. I did grind the uziza leaves and scent leaves together as you can find below, while the bitter leaf was ground alone as you can see in the bottom-right plate.

What you find at the top-right is palm fruit sauce, then a combination of ground crayfish and red pepper at the top left and cleaned roasted fish at the top-middle.

This soup is actually made with banga sauce (Palm fruit sauce) and not palm oil, just buy 4 cups of banga (palm fruit), boil for 15 minutes, pound with mortar and pestle, add water, filter to get the sauce, wash and filter to get 4 cups of thick banga sauce and set aside.

Preparation:
Grind all the leaves together, these ground leaves act as the soup thickener and also gives it the black looking color, hence the name – black soup. You can blend to paste by adding a little water to ease up the movement of the blades. I ground the bitterleaves seperatly while the uziza and scent leaves were mixed together.

Wash and boil the meat with half cup of onions, 2 cubes of maggi and a pinch of salt. Cook for 30-45 minutes, until the meat becomes soft and easily chew-able, you can add a little water to stop it from getting burned.

Add the dry fish (hot-water-washed), stock fish, crayfish, add the banga sauce and allow to cook for up to 15 minutes until the soupy mixture thickens.
This picture below give you a visual explanation, you can see that the soup is already thick, thanks to the banga (palm fruit) sauce.

Add the ground leaves, stir, add 2 cubes of maggi, salt to taste, allow to simmer for another five minutes and you are done.

As usual, serve with eba, fufu amala or semo.

NOTE: If you have cow liver included, you don’t wanna cook it over 10 minutes. you can start parboiling it with the rest of the meat but you have to remove it after 10 minutes and add them later when the soup is almost done.

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Here is the video for black soup, enjoy.