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Egusi soup
Also known as egusi · melon seed soup · efo egusi · ofe egusi
A thick stew of ground melon seeds and greens, deeply savoury, with a ball of pounded yam for scooping. Rich and rib-sticking.
Typical serving
640 kcal
usually 500–810 kcal
 Protein | 26 g |
|---|---|
 Carbs | 53 g |
 Fat | 36 g |
Reference figures for a dish as it is commonly cooked — never a measurement of your plate. The range is the honest part: two kitchens make this differently. In the app, a photograph replaces the guess.
Before you start
- a blender for the pepper base
Ingredients
Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard
- 90gground egusi melon seeds
- 250gchicken thighs — bone in, cut into pieces
- 2 tbspoil — red palm oil if you have it
- 2red peppers
- 2red chillies
- 1onion
- 200gspinach — or any tough green
- 400mlstock
- 1 tbspground dried crayfish — optional, and hard to replace
- to tastesalt
Method
7 steps
blend · 5mPeppers, chillies and half the onion blitzed to a smooth base with a splash of water.
simmer · 25m walk awayChicken covered with the stock with the rest of the onion and simmered until cooked through with no pink at the bone. Chicken out, broth kept.
- simmer · 15m
Pepper base into the oil in a wide pot and cooked down hard until it darkens and the oil separates back out at the edges. Everything after this depends on it.
fold · 4mEgusi mixed with a little water into a thick paste, then dropped into the pot in spoonfuls. Not stirred in — dropped in.
- simmer · 12m walk away
Lid on, low heat, and left completely alone so the lumps set. Stir now and it turns to sludge and stays that way.
- fold · 10m
Then broken up gently with the edge of a spoon, chicken and crayfish back in with enough broth to loosen it, and simmered together.
finish · 4mSpinach in at the very end and given two minutes only, salted, and served with rice or pounded yam.
Worth knowing
Egusi seeds come from a bitter melon grown for the seed alone — the flesh is discarded, the harvest is the inside.
Melon seeds are dense in plant protein and minerals — the stew’s body is nutrition, not thickener.
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