HOW I MADE MY 'GBEGIRI' SOUP

- March 20, 2019

Today I'm sharing one of my ways of preparing gbegiri soup. 'Gbegiri' soup is a very popular Nigerian beans soup, mostly eaten and appreciated by the western Nigerians. It could be made with either a black-eyed beans or brown beans. Don't worry, gbegiri soup is considered to me as one of the easiest soup. it's really a no fuss soup to make. I encourage you to give a try after reading through the simple steps if you haven't attempted it before. You would be shocked to find out how easy it is.

So if you are Yoruba or probably hanging out or married to a Yoruba, you must have heard about this combination; 'Gbegiri ati ewedu' meaning gbegiri and ewedu. ewedu is another kind of complimentary soup which is goes with stew. In general, gbegiri, ewedu and stew can be best enjoyed with amala or tuwo shinkafa, depending or your preference or what's available.

Interestingly, just some weeks ago I decided to give my family a nice treat of this sumptuous and special food. It's now a special food, since we are not in Nigeria where we could get it easily. 'Buka' as it is called in the western part Nigeria is a local restaurant where you can go enjoy it.

Below are the recipes I used in coking my gbegiri soup.

Ingredients;

Cup of black-eyed or brown beans
Palm oil
Crayfish powder
Blended dry fish
Grounded dried pepper (Atagungun)
Locust beans (Iru)
Knor maggi
Salt to taste.

Preparation;

So firstly, you need to peel off the outter shell of the beans, irrespective of the kind of beans you are dealing with. Personally, I prefer the brown beans- that was what I used. To make it easier, most people soak the bean in the water before peeling, but since it takes less time to do it for me, I rather don't soak.

Afterwards, you cook the washed and peeled beans to the point that it becomes very soft and mash-able, just like you are preparing ewa gayin (mashed beans). The beans should be cooked with no salt, but you can add some onions (optional). Unfortunately, I don't have an image of the cooked beans.

Note; you need no blender but rather a filter.

Try to separate the shaft from the beans, adding water gradually would help. Don't be afraid to add some more water if the bean-juice is too thick.

Pour the extracted bean-juice into a pot and cook. Add your maggi, crayfish powder, locust beans, grounded fish, a little palm oil just a give it a color change and of course, salt to taste. leave it to cook for about 10-15 minutes, so to make the ingredients cook up.

Then taste! taste! taste! to be sure it's good to go.😋

And there you go!