CbB: Fresh Okro Soup

Say hello to my freshest Okro soup!!

Tasty.

Quick.

Healthy.

The three words that best describe it.

Fresh okro soup with ugu and uziza leaves serves with wheat flour

People say they eat okro soup with boiled yam, roasted plantain etc and I have always shivered at the thought!!! The mental picture I have of okro soup is the 'saucey', 'drawy' 'tasty' okro-cum-ugu-littered soup my mum made and which I also learnt to make perfectly and enjoy.

One blessed day, I was so sure I had ogbono in the freezer somewhere and just bought other ingredients to make okro soup. Lo! and behold, there was no ogbono anywhere in the house (I coulda sworn someone stole the darn thing!!). I was determined in my heart to make that soup (besides I had made promises I intended to keep) so I made my first ever okro soup without ogbono. As an 'igbo ghel' brought up in the 'igbo ways'- cooking okro soup with ogbono, I was certain it would be disaster all the way but at the end of that success story, I was never going back!

Fast forward few weeks later, I took the bold step again and made my fresh, crunchy okro soup!

Ingredients

Okro

Ugu leaf

Uziza leaf

Fresh pepper (ground)

Onions

Beef

Smoked fish

Crayfish

Knor cubes

Salt

Palm oil

• Cut up my beef into bite size (I prefer having little piece of meat at intervals while enjoying the meal) and cooked it with knor cubes, onions and pepper until very tender. (pressure cooker did the job in 10 minutes) 
• At this point there was a little stock still left in the pressure cooker, so I turned everything into my soup pot and continued cooking as I wanted the water to dry up. 
• When all the water had dried up, I put a little palm oil into the pot that had the meat in it and added more of the fresh pepper and smoked fish (cleaned and rinsed). Basically, the meat and fish were frying with the pepper for like 5 mins. 
• Added crayfish and stirred before adding the okro and mixing thoroughly with the sauce. 
• Added crayfish, salt and pepper to taste and the ugu and uziza leaf. 
• Reduced the heat and covered the pot for a minute before turning off the heat. 

The end result was a fresh, crunchy and tasty okro soup that I could imagine eating with yam, roasted plantain,.....errr......even pasta sef.....#okbye!