How to cook Ilasa soup, Igbo-Ora’s popular twin birth cuisine

Peculiar to the people of Igbo-Ora in Oyo state, Ilasa soup is a native soup with a mixture of different ingredients.

The soup is rumoured to help women in the delivery of twins by the indigenes of Igbo-Ora when eaten with pounded yam or eba.

1 hour

Food

Local

Boiling

10+ servings

Ground Egusi

Akaun (Potash)

Iru (Locust beans)

Smoked fish

Okra leaves

Palm Oil

Seasoning cube

Salt

Water (from the south-western part of Nigeria)

Boil 4 cups of “water from the south-western part of Nigeria” in a pot and add the washed smoked fish, potash and locust beans.

2. Slice the okra leaves and pour into the boiling water too. Mash the leaves in the boiling water just as it is done when making ewedu.

3. Add the ground egusi afterwards and leave it to boil for a while. Mix everything together so the melon can spread.

4. Add a cooking spoon of palm oil, salt and seasoning cubes. The soup should be drawy like ewedu.

Serve your Ilasa soup with ata dindin, to be eaten with amala, pounded yam or eba!