Okro Soup

Okro soup is among the quickest Nigerian soups to make and among the most eaten. Okra is chopped, cooked briefly in a stock built on assorted meat, dried fish and crayfish, finished with palm oil, and taken off the heat while it is still green. The whole thing takes minutes once the vegetables are cut, which is the trade off: most of the work is chopping. Okra is native to Africa, with its origin generally placed in the Ethiopian highlands, and it has spread from there across the continent and well beyond it. The draw it produces, the viscous quality that thickens the soup, is the entire point in West African cooking and the thing that people elsewhere often try to eliminate. Here it is what makes the soup work with a swallow: it slides. The names change across Nigeria. Ila asepo among the Yoruba, okwuru among the Igbo, miyan kubewa in Hausa, otong among the Efik, and okro generally. Potash, called kaun, is traditional for increasing the draw and is now optional and somewhat contested, with many cooks leaving it out entirely. Used at all it must be used sparingly, since too much kills the elasticity it is meant to increase. It is eaten with eba, fufu, semo, amala or pounded yam.