Twelve things every Owerri cook knows

None of these are secrets. They are the things a cook in Owerri would assume you already knew, which is exactly why nobody writes them down. Each one fixes a specific way that Nigerian food goes wrong in a kitchen that has not cooked it before.

1. Fry the egusi until it clumps, then keep going

Egusi soup fails when the ground melon seed is stirred into liquid. It has to go into hot palm oil first, with onion and pepper, and be fried until it curdles into soft golden clumps that hold their shape. That takes longer than feels reasonable, ten minutes or more, and it is the whole difference between a soup with body and a gritty stew.

2. Ogbono dissolves in oil, off the heat

Ground ogbono thrown into boiling stock forms lumps and refuses to draw. Take the pot off the heat, stir the ogbono into warm palm oil until it is a smooth paste, and only then add it to the stock. Stir constantly for the first couple of minutes. The draw comes from patience, not from more ogbono.

3. Salt after the stockfish, never before

Stockfish and dried fish carry a great deal of salt, and so does crayfish. Season the pot only after they have simmered for a while and given up what they hold. Cooks who salt at the start end up with a soup that cannot be rescued.

4. Shaki and ponmo go in first, and alone

Assorted meat is not one ingredient. Tripe and cow skin take far longer to soften than beef, so they are cooked first, on their own, with onion and seasoning, until tender. The beef joins them later. Put everything in together and you choose between rubber and mush.

5. Do not stir the jollof once it is on low

After the rice has absorbed most of the liquid, the lid goes on, the heat goes to its lowest and you leave it alone. The bottom layer catches slightly against the pot and that scorch is where the smoke comes from. Stirring at this stage gives you tomato rice. Not stirring gives you jollof.

6. Wash bitterleaf until the water runs clear, then taste

Bitterleaf is squeezed and rinsed in changes of water to draw out most of its bitterness, leaving a pleasant edge. How many changes depends on the leaf and on you. Stop when a raw leaf tastes the way you want the soup to taste, because cooking will not take any more out.

7. Tear oha, do not cut it

Oha leaves are torn by hand into the pot in the last minutes of cooking. Cutting them with a knife blackens the edges and dulls the flavour. It is also traditionally the job of whoever is youngest in the kitchen, so it is a good way to get children involved.

8. Pound yam hot, with wet hands

Pounded yam has to be pounded while the boiled yam is still steaming, or it will never go smooth. Keep a bowl of water beside you and wet your hands before shaping it, or it will stick to everything you own. If you use a machine, the same rule applies: hot yam in, and work fast.

9. Scent leaf goes in last

Scent leaf, nchanwụ, is the aroma of pepper soup and it is fragile. Add it in the final minute with the heat off. Cooked for longer it turns bitter and the perfume is lost. The same is true of uziza leaf.

10. Grind your own crayfish and keep it in the freezer

Ground crayfish goes stale fast and stale crayfish tastes of very little. Buy it whole, grind it in a spice grinder in small batches, and freeze the ground powder. The difference in a pot of soup is immediate.

11. Let the soup rest before you serve it

Ten minutes off the heat with the lid on lets the oil settle back into the soup and the flavours find each other. Soup served the second it stops boiling is thinner and harsher than the same soup ten minutes later. This is also why every Nigerian soup is better the next day.

12. Red palm oil is an ingredient, not a fat

Treat it the way you would treat butter in French cooking or good olive oil in Italian: as a flavour that the dish is built on. Use the amount the recipe says. Reducing it to make the soup "lighter" produces a soup that tastes of nothing in particular.

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