🇳🇬 Nigeria
Goat meat pepper soup
Pepper soup made with bone-in goat meat (and sometimes the head or offal), the best-known form of the soup, simmered with the pepper-soup spice blend, onion and chilli, finished with uziza or basil.
Origin and history
Goat meat pepper soup is the version most often found on Nigerian restaurant menus and in the diaspora, where it has become a signature dish of Nigerian restaurants abroad. It follows the general pepper soup tradition of southern Nigeria: indigenous spices, hot chilli and a thin broth.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 5 servings
- Total time
- 1 h 30 min
- Hands-on
- 25 min
Ingredients
- 1 kg2.2 lb goat meat, bone-in, cut into small pieces; add a little tripe, liver or tongue if you like
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 stock cubes, optional
- 3 tbsp ground pepper soup spice blend, calabash nutmeg, Negro pepper, uziza, alligator pepper
- 1-3 habanero or scotch bonnet chillies, ground, to taste
- 1 tbsp ground dried crayfish
- 1.5 litres6 cups water
- 2 tsp dried uziza or basil leaves, or a handful of fresh scent leaf
- salt, to taste
Method
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1. Wash the goat meat and put it in a pot with the onion, one stock cube and a little salt. Do not add water yet.
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2. Cover and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes, until the meat releases its own juices.
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3. Add a cup or two of water and simmer for 30 minutes, covered.
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4. Add enough water to cover the meat well, about 1.5 litres in all, and continue until the meat is nearly tender, about 20 to 30 minutes more.
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5. Stir in the pepper soup spice, crayfish and chilli, plus the second stock cube if using. Simmer 10 to 15 minutes until the goat is tender and the broth is strongly peppery.
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6. Taste and adjust the salt and heat.
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7. Add the uziza or basil, simmer for a minute, and serve hot.
Notes
- This is the best-known pepper soup. It differs from the parent chicken pepper soup in the meat: goat on the bone, sometimes with head, tripe or offal, which needs a longer first simmer before the spices go in. Goat is sold as chevon or mutton in some markets; lamb neck or shoulder on the bone works, and is milder and cooks faster.
- Do not trim the fat too hard; a little keeps the thin broth from tasting flat. Skim only if the surface is very greasy.
- If you cannot find a pepper soup spice blend, grate fresh nutmeg, add cracked black peppercorns and a pinch of grains of paradise; the flavour will be less resinous than calabash nutmeg and Negro pepper but close in spirit. Ground crayfish can be replaced by a little dried shrimp powder. Basil replaces scent leaf or uziza leaf.
- It is served alone in a bowl, often with a cold drink in bars, or with boiled yam, ripe or unripe plantain, or agidi (eko). Not with a swallow.
- A pressure cooker cuts the goat's cooking time to about 25 minutes; add the spices afterwards and simmer 10 minutes.
- Other protein versions, such as catfish pepper soup (point and kill), have their own pages.
Adapted from Nigerian Food TV, Nigerian Goat Meat Pepper Soup, The Guardian (Nigeria), The ultimate guide to making goat meat peppersoup, and Kitchen Butterfly (Ozoz Sokoh), How to Make Nigerian Pepper Soup.
At the festivals
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