1. Egusi soup is the king of all soups in Nigeria.
2. Egusi soup is the most loved, most popular and most eaten soup in Nigeria.
3. Egusi soup is a Nigerian traditional soup recipe, that is cooked with Melon/Egusi seeds.
4. Although, Egusi soup is eaten by all tribes in Nigeria but no tribe in Nigeria is the inventor of this mouthwatering Egusi soup.
5. Egusi soup is known as miyan gushi in Hausa, ofe Egwusi in Igbo and efo elegusi in Yoruba.
6. One of the common questions about egusi is that “Is egusi seed gotten from watermelon seed or pumpkin seeds?”. No, it is not. Egusi is the edible seed of egusi melon fruit (Citrullus lanatus) which is native to West Africa and really looks like a small watermelon/pumpkin seeds.
7. Egusi soup has more than 10 different ways of cooking it, but there are 2 main methods of preparing egusi soup: Cooking or frying method. The cooking method is the original method of cooking this delicious soup while the frying method is the modern and sweetest of all the various ways of cooking this popular soup.
8. Egusi soup is a versatile soup, that can go with any proteins, vegetable leaf and swallow of choice.
9. Egusi soup is actually supposed to be a thick soup, but you can cook it to your own choice of consistency.
10. Egusi soup is best cooked with bitter leaf than any other vegetable leaves.
11. Okro, vegetable oil, thyme, curry powder, yam paste or cocoyam yam should never be used to cook your Egusi soup.
12. Old Egusi seeds rise more than new Egusi seeds. So take note of that, whenever you want to cook your Egusi soup.
13. It is okay to use fresh tomatoes to prepare your egusi soup. Using fresh tomato in your egusi soup helps to brighten up the colour of the soup, makes the soup rich and gives unique taste to it.
14. It takes 25 to 30 minutes to cook a perfect Egusi soup.
15. Egusi soup is best cooked on medium to low heat inorder to avoid burning.
16. Hand peeled Egusi rises more than machine peeled Egusi and it also has more taste. So take note of that, whenever you want to cook your Egusi soup.
17. Although, Egusi is a thickener itself, but you can enhance its thickness with osu (white powder), ofor, achi, ogbono, baking flour or cornflour.
18. Egusi soup is much sweeter the next day, by then, all the ingredients might have set in the soup.
19. The modern way of cooking Egusi soup is by stew base cooking, that is using your tomato stew/sauce to cook the egusi soup.
20. Egusi melon seed is enclosed in a husk which needs to be opened to reveal the edible part. This creamy white kernel is called egusi/agushi, and the process of removing the husk is called “shelling”.
Peoplesmind
Written by: Food Research Kitchen
