How To Cook Nigerian Soups With Less

This is how to cook Nigerian soups when you don’t have much to spend

Cooking a nutritious, good looking and tasty pot of soup can be quite expensive. There are a few tricks that can give us great results with less. For the step by step cooking recipes of all the soups on this page, visit here and scroll down to see all…

okra soup

Nigerian Okro Soup With small money

1. Buy fresh breakable okro to avoid waste of  tough okra. Test by breaking off the tip of big sized okras.
2. Do not cook with beef, chicken, snails, periwinkle, crayfish, stock fish, smoked fish at the same time
3. Maximise cost by cooking with just two or three protein sources. If you cook with stock fish, you can forgo smoke fish. Substitute periwinkles for snails and vice versa.
4. Add a little ogbono to make a lil quantity of okra give you more.
5. Sprinkle some green leaves to help thicken the soup like in the picture above. I sprinkled ugu sparingly.

light okra soup before I added green vegetables to help thicken soup

 

edikang ikong soup

  Good Edikang Ikong Soup low income way

1. Buy more water leaf than ugu. Ugu is more expensive, a small bunch or two is just OK.
2. Make crayfish and smoked fish mandatory, while stockfish,  kpomo, beef, or mutton remain optional.
3. Add just one type of meat like beef or goat or snails and not everything in one pot. 
4. Cut kpomo into tiny pieces and use in place of periwinkle

 

vegetable soup

 

Nigerian White Soup

  Nigerian White Soup With low cost

1. Make it fisherman white soup with about  three types of seafood and leave out the meat. Abi, meat no dey tire you? Na every time person dey chew meat? Too much meat no good o. Most Nigerian soups can be cooked without meat.
2. Leave crayfish out and cook with smoked fish and some mushrooms. It will still give that rich white soup flavor.
3. Choose just stock fish and smoked fish, you will be shocked by  the result.

 

egusi melon  bitter leaf soup

Egusi Soup low cost

1. Cook with one type of meat plus fish and crayfish.
2. Make the soup look richer with big sizes of kpomo.
3. Cook with a big pot and much water cos egusi rises while cooking and will end up giving you a big pot of soup. Egusi soup tastes better after the first day of cooking. so, cooking much will help you enjoy that unique taste that comes with warming/reheating egusi soup.
4. Buy old and not “just harvested” Egusi. Old egusi rises so much and tastes better Egusi is harvested around August, September of every year, so to get old ones, buy before that time.It is very easy to store. I store egusi in airtight plastic containers. Some trusted sellers still say the truth about which one is old or freshly harvested in their shops. The Tip is: Old egusi is more expensive compared to fresh ones.

Water leaf soup

  Water leaf/ Spinach soup with little

1. This is actually a way of cooking vegetable soup without having to spend on expensive ugu and afang leaves.
2. Buy just waterleaf, but, remember to stir and turn off the heat without over cooking tender water leaves.
3. Cook with crayfish, goat meat or beef and not both.
4. Plant waterleaf in your compound and flower/ plant beds. It looks nice on the flower beds and is very easy to grow.When you buy water leaf, let the vegetable sellers cut out the stalk for you while the chop only the vegetables. Plant the stalks on the flower beds and water every evening. That’s all. They do not require any special care to germinate and grow.  Water leaf grows so fast and can be used for other vegetable soups too. Water leaf is necessary for many Nigerian soups especially the vegetable soups.

 

pot ready for  Nigerian Soups

 How To Get Any Nigerian Soup Pot Ready With almost nothing:

1. Add kpomo to make the pot of soup look meaty
2. Cook with one or the other of the different types of meat and not all
3. Add smoked fish in place of stock fish. smoked fish is cheaper. You can leave out both smoked fish and  stock fish, and cook with meat and much crayfish

Nigerian tomato Fish stew

 How To Cook NIGERIAN TOMATO STEW with less:

1. Cook stew with either meat or stew and call it meat stew or fish stew.
2. You can cook stew with snails alone or just corned beef with tomatoes.
3. You can buy kpomo and crayfish, for crayfish stew, and you will still get a great tasty pot of stew
4. Buy biggest sizes of tomatoes available. The quantity may look small, but, when blended, they give more and thicker tomatoes than tiny fruits.

 

Nigerian White Soup with tiny pounded yam in the pot to thicken the soup.

 For How To Save Cost With Nigerian White Soup, scroll up.

White soup with preserved hot leaf to avoid buying every time white soup is to be cooked

 Scroll up again to see how to save cost when you cook Naija white soup

Crayfish Vegetable Soup

 Crayfish vegetable soup comes in handy in an emergency. Say you have vegetables in the fridge but have run out of meat. Fry crayfish with pepper and onions before adding the vegetables. This has to be very small in quantity, for just two or three servings. The fried crayfish gives it a unique taste. Ugu and even green amaranth can be cooked this way.

Egusi Afang Soup   Egusi Afang Soup Economy size Just like with other kinds of soup, it must not be like the “maggi cooking show” kind of soup. Lol. Cook with meat or just sea foods. Add kpomo to make the meat quantity look much. Choose smoked fish or stockfish and not both.  Above is the list of many Nigerian soups that can be cooked with less. **Can you think of other ways, or  things we can do to cut cost while Cooking Nigerian soups/Meals? READ MORE: www.wivestownhallconnection.com

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