Easiest Way to Cook Recipe: Yummy Oha Soup

Oha Soup. Ofe Ora (as the people of Igbo call it) is one of the most delicious soups that is popularly made and eaten by the people of Igbo. The Igbos are one of the popular ethnic groups in Nigeria. This soup is made with the leaves of a tree called oha.

It is a very traditional soup similar to the bitterleaf soup but cooked with Ora leaves. Ora (Oha) Soup is special because the tender ora leaves used in preparing this soup recipe are seasonal unlike their bitterleaf counterpart which can be found all year round. Oha Soup, popularly referred to as Ofe Oha by the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria is an absolutely delicious traditional soup recipe. You can have Oha Soup using 14 ingredients and 9 steps. Here is how you cook it.

Ingredients of Oha Soup

1. It's 1/2 kg of palm fruit.
2. It's 2 bunch of Oha Leaf.
3. It's 1/2 bunch of Uziza leaf.
4. It's 1/2 kg of goat meat.
5. You need 1 head of stock fish.
6. It's 1/2 kg of offal (shaki, roundabout).
7. Prepare 2 tbsp of crayfish (blended).
8. You need 3 of coco yam.
9. You need 2 of knorr cube.
10. Prepare 5 of pepper (blended).
11. It's of Kpomo dice.
12. You need to taste of Salt.
13. You need 1 of large dry catfish.
14. It's 1 of wraps of ogiri.

Oha soup isn't exactly a go-to kind of soup because the main ingredient, Oha leaves, is a seasonal one. Oha soup is made in a similar way to ofe onugbu in that it is made with a thickener. This thickener could be traditionally Coco yam (boiled and pounded or processed in the food processor then added to the soup.) By the time it dissolves, the soup should have thickened.(Note that the soup could get thicker as it cools.) Taste for seasoning. I added cameroon peppers at this stage (optional).

Oha Soup instructions

1. Wash and parboil palm fruit till it’s tender and cooked through; this should take roughly 30mins depending on your burner.
2. Drain palm fruit and place in a mortar; pound till you shred out the palm fruit skin, while you are at it, boil water for the extraction and set aside.
3. Add boiled water into the palm fruit and stir; (be careful not to hurt yourself) and sieve out the juice once you are done, heat up the juice and allow it cook till it starts to concentrate, (you can decide to parboiled your meat in the palm fruit juice or separate, I prefer separate so I can spice my meat to my taste).
4. Wash goat meat, offal, stock fish and parboil with little water spice with salt, knorr cube and pepper allow to cook till it’s tender halfway add the kpomo and snail reason is to avoid over cooking it.
5. In a small pot, wash coco yam and cook till it’s tender; remove the back peel and pound in a mortar adding a little palm fruit oil to help ease the pounding and avoid lumps. Once you are done set aside.
6. Once the palm fruit is getting concentrated add the cooked meat and the dry cat fish after washing it allow it cook for 10mins, then add the coco yam this will help thicken the soup.
7. Shred Oha leaf with your hands and not with a knife (myth not verified) dice uziza leaf; wash the leaf separately and set them aside.
8. Add crayfish, pepper, knorr cube, ogiri and salt stir after about 5mins add oha leaf and uziza leaf immediately after stir and turn off heat.
9. Serve.

Turn off the heat, make your choice of swallow and enjoy. To prepare the ora soup, you start by washing, spicing and cooking both the meat (assorted meat) and stockfish together. Once they are tender, you can then add the red palm oil, blended red pepper, stock cubes, ogiri ugba (local spice), salt and cocoyam paste (formed by stirring cocoyam powder with hot water to form a thick paste). Oha, also referred to as ora soup is an African traditional soup prepared with oha leaves and highly sorted for, due to its unique delicious taste. It is very easy to prepare and also not time consuming once you can make it.

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