Here's How to Make a Banging Nigerian Banga Soup

Banga soup is one of the easiest Nigerian soups to make and it is very delicious. It can be eaten with garri, pounded yam, fufu or rice. It's very oily because the base is the extract gotten from palm fruit.

This soup has been on my mind for some time and I've been searching for the banga seeds (palm fruits) to make it. Banga soup is peculiar to Southern Nigeria and I now live in the North, so it's hard getting banga here. I finally found somewhere to get banga in the local market and my joy knew no bounds really. It wasn't the finest banga seeds but it was manageable.

Ingredients

Banga seeds
Beletete
Banga stick
Banga spice
Goat meat
Kpomo
Onion
Red bonnet pepper
Crayfish
Salt
Cayenne pepper
Seasoning

I had all of the ingredients at home and they can be found in big supermarkets across Nigeria. They're packaged so you don't need to do any crushing and grinding yourself. You could in fact get packaged banga extract too but I like extracting mine myself.

The Process

The first step is to wash the banga and sieve out the dirt.

Next, cook in a pot with enough water to cover it and cook until soft.

When it's soft enough, pound the seeds with a wooden pestle or a bottle like I did.

Now to extract the base, add water bit by bit and strain with a sieve. Don't put too much water, else it takes longer time to cook.

Repeatedly pour the extract into another bowl until you notice there's no dirt left at the bottom.

Now that we're done with the hardest part, next thing is to blend the pepper, onion and banga spice together.

Set the pot of banga extract on a stove, add the banga stick and leave to boil for about 20 minutes.

By now, you'd see the soup is thicker now and the oil settling at the top, you can take out the banga stick at this point and add the blended mix from earlier. This will further thicken the soup.

Next, add the cooked goat meat and kpomo. You can use any meat or fish of your choice, they all give it a unique taste.

Add salt, pepper, more crayfish and some seasoning and let that simmer for a minute, then went on to add a teaspoonful of beletete leaves. This can be substituted with dry bitter leaves.

A minute later, the banging banga soup is ready!