Yoruba Foods and How To Make Ewedu Soup

I want to talk about Yoruba foods and how to make ewedu soup which is likely the most popular Yoruba soup.

I have lived in the Yoruba land for close to six years now, it is a very wonderful part of Nigeria. The state is inhabited by the people of Yoruba and a mixture of other Nigerian tribes. If you live in a Yoruba dominated state you will likely be coaxed into eating some of their foods.

Yoruba foods are a lot different from what you get in other part of the country. There are over three hundred different tribes in Nigeria so it is expected that the foods from one tribe would be slightly different from what you get in another tribe.

Most of the Yoruba foods are easy to make, I have tried quite a few of them in the last six years. These people depend heavily on cooked foods unlike the southern part of the country where the people depend mostly on fruits and simple recipes.

Food in yorubaland must be properly cooked and decorated before serving.

It is the most appealing part of the foods in a yorubaland, the foods are very colorful, they are likely the tribe with the most colorful foods in Nigeria. It is possible to find the complete blend of the whole primary colors in a plate of Yoruba food.

Here I want to talk about a couple of Yoruba foods that I have eaten and I will go ahead to tell you how to prepare ewedu soup, a simple but popular Yoruba soup. There are several other Yoruba soups but this kind of stands out in most occasions. The ewedu soup will likely not miss the list of top five Yoruba soups.

Breakfast is easy for the Yoruba people, while in Lagos state, I learned that one of the most popular Yoruba breakfast recipes is a combination of bread and a particular recipe of beans. I must admit that I also fell in love with this recipe, it was the cheapest and yet most popular breakfast recipe in my part of Lagos state. The bread is no other but the popular "Agege bread"

Anything goes as lunch in yorubaland. Eba, which is the most popular Yoruba food is the most popular lunch recipe among the people of Yoruba. Eba goes with any of the many soups made in Yoruba land, these people are fund of eating a combination of different soups at the same time, I find this an interesting habit also.

There are also meals of rice, we have jollof rice as a Yoruba food and several yam recipes, the popular pounded yam originated from the Yoruba land and has since taken the top position among foods eaten Nigeria.

Lets talk about how to make ewedu soup, in case you know so little about ewedu soup, it is the popular green soup you see while searching for Nigeria soup, it is green in color because the leave is ground. This soup is made in less than thirty minute and it requires just about five different ingredients.

Ingredients for Nigerian ewedu soup includes

Ewedu leaves
Salt to taste
A cube of maggi
Edible potash

like I initially stated, this is likely the cheapest Yoruba soups and also the easiest to make. I can make a pot of ewedu soup in less than thirty minutes, while it takes well over an hour to make other Nigerian soups.

Step 1
You can start by preparing the ingredients, I forgot to mention that you would also need the ewedu broom for the preparation of this soup, there is a particular kind of broom reserved for the making of ewedu soup, it is the usual broom but this one is made specifically to be used for mashing the ewedu leaves.

Wash the leaves and start cooking with a cup of water or two, add a teaspoon of edible potash, this will soften the leaves and make them easy to be mashed. It is also possible to do without the mashing broom but you will need to slice the leaves to very tiny bit with a kitchen knife.

Set a cooking pot on the burner add about two cups of water, allow to heat to boiling point then go ahead and add the leaves plus a teaspoon of potash allow to boil for about ten minutes before using the ewedu broom on it, there is no need of this broom if you sliced the leaves to very tiny bits already.

Once the leaves are soft through the help of the potash which acts a s a catalyst you go ahead and mash with the broom (more like pound), mash for a minute of two until the desirable sizes are achieved then go ahead and add salt and maybe a cube of maggi or two (depending on size of soup)

Follow my list of Popular Yoruba Recipes or you can visit my page on How To Make Ewedu Soup, the