Okro Soup: An African Delicacy

Ingredients

• 250g Okra
• 3 cooking spoons red palm oil
• Beef: Best cut
• Shaki (Cow Tripe) (Optional)
• Fish: Iced Fish (Mackerel/Titus), Dry Fish, Stock Fish
• 1 handful crayfish
• Pepper and Salt (to taste)
• Onions (optional)
• Vegetable: Nigerian pumpkin leaves or spinach (fresh or frozen)
• 3 stock cubes

Read more at http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/soups/okra-okro-soup.html#kIAwMc4QVRMbfzkL.99

Watch how to cook here: http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/soups/okra-okro-soup.html#okrasoupvideo

This is one of the fastest and most versatile soups to cook in Nigeria. As a main dish, you can eat with numerous sides including rice, fufu, pounded yam, garri (eba), boiled yam and so on. Okra is also a very healthy vegetable. 

Origins: 

Okra is an ancient vegetable that originated in southern Ethiopia in far antiquity. It provides thickness and savor in the one-pot stews that are the basis of many traditional African diets.


Spreading across to Western Africa and down into the central part of the continent during the Bantu migrations around 2,000 BCE, okra has been a staple in African and African diaspora cuisine for a long time. It even crossed the ocean to Asia at an early date and spread with Islam to India, where it is called “ladies fingers.” About the same time okra was making its appearance in Brazil, the West Indies and later mainland North America, it made its way to China and the island of Macau where it bears one of its many African names—quilobo—from Angola.  In fact, quilobo is one variant of the KiMbundu word quingombo, where we get the word “gumbo. From the Igbo language of southeastern Nigeria we get the vegetable’s English name, as okwuru became ochra and okra. Along the entire length of the 3,500 mile coast exploited by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, okra was grown and cooked with other vegetables or rice and made into soup.