How to prepare River state’s native soup

Rivers Native Soup is one of Rivers State’s delight and it is from the niger delta region of Nigeria.

These are the riverine people that use the freshest seafood to prepare expensive soups and meals.

Ingredients:

2 cups or 2 handfuls of fresh Prawns or Shrimps
12 pieces of stockfish ear (Nti okporoko)
1 cup of ground crayfish
2kg of Meat( Bushmeat, Cow Leg, Oxtail, Snail, Cow head, etc).
2 Medium size dry fish
7 balls of Cocoyam (Ede, Colocasia esculenta), you can decide to cook and pound into a paste as a thickener
15-20cl of Palm oil
2-3 cubes of seasoning
2 cups of Periwinkles
2 cups of Ngolo
2 cups of sliced Uziza leaves Salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:

Wash clean and parboil the shrimps/prawns in a small pot of boiling water.
Add one cube of seasoning as it is already with natural salt and cook for 4 minutes
decollate it and drain the water then put in a clean bowl.
Prepare your meat, wash clean, and parboil in a large pot add 2 cubes of seasoning, 1 bulb of Onion, Salt for taste, and a dash of fresh pepper.
Wash and slice the Uziza leaves.
Grind the crayfish and fresh pepper also, you can grind together or grind separately.
Soak the stockfish and dry fish with boiled water and wash thoroughly to remove sand and debone it.
Add the washed dry fish/stockfish in the boiling meat on the fire, after about 30-50 minutes of cooking just the meat.
Once they are soft and the water is almost dried (about 1 cup left) add about 5-7 cups of water, palm oil, and the ground crayfish.
Allow the soup to cook for 8-12 minutes before adding salt to taste.
Add the clean Ngolo, stir, add the Cocoyam(Ede), which acts as a thickener then allow it to dissolve in 8-10 minutes, if it is still very watery add more paste, cook for three minutes before adding the periwinkles, Shrimps or prawn and Uziza leaves which is like the last ingredient of the native soup.
Allow to simmer for another five minutes and turn off the heat.
Your soup is ready
The native will go with any swallow, Garri, Semolina, Wheat, Poundo yam flour, etc.