A Handy Guide To Eating South-South Food

There’s an art to cooking South-South food. Anyone from those parts will tell you free of charge. It’s more than just throwing ingredients together into a big pot. There’s a certain skill need to turn Starch. You need to know the exact proportion of yam to plantain to make a perfect pot of Onunu. There’s also an art to eating South-South food. You just don’t consume it, you savour every bite. 

So read this before you make your next trip down South.

You can’t leave this life without trying Ekpang Nkukwo from Akwa Ibom.

It’s like Ikokore but better. If you eat it without periwinkle your enjoyment can’t be complete.

You might think you’ve had proper plantain porridge before, but I’m here to tell you that you haven’t until you’ve had Kekefia.

Kekefia made with ripe plantain is the manna from heaven you read about in the bible.

Whoever the first person was, to discover that combining plantain and yam will birth the magic that is Onunu deserves a Nobel peace prize.

The way bread goes with butter is the same way Onunu goes with fish pepper soup. Please don’t go and eat it with Efo.

After its art, Black Soup might be the second greatest thing the people of Edo have given Nigeria.

Technically you can eat Black Soup with any swallow food, but the right thing to pair this with is pounded yam.

Delta people like to make noise about Banga so that we won’t discover their best kept secret – Ukodo. Well the gig is up.

The secret to Ukodo is finding the perfect plantain for it. The kind of plantain that’s just ripe enough to be sweet, but not too ripe. Ukodo is also not meant to be eaten alone, you have to eat it with friends.

There are a number of things every human being deserves to experience before they die. One of them is eating Native Soup. And not just any Native Soup, Ikwerre Native Soup.

Anyone who serves you Native Soup without fish is capable of murder, so you better hold their shirt.

How the unlikely combo of palm oil, potash and tomatoes results in Owo soup is beyond me. Owo soup is what you eat when you are in a bad mood and need a pick me up. Or when you’ve just come back from a long day at work.

Both Delta and Edo people lay claim to Owo soup, but so long as we are eating it with Starch or yam, we really can’t be bothered.

There’s a ton of great food in the South, so we are sure we didn’t cover everything. What’s your favourite South-South food?