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Gbegiri (Bean Soup) 🇳🇬 Nigerian Cuisine

Gbegiri (Bean Soup)

A smooth, velvety Yoruba soup made from peeled black-eyed peas cooked with palm oil, locust beans, and crayfish — a cornerstone of the iconic abula trio.

⏱20 min prep 🔥50 min cook ⏰70 min total 🍽4 servings 📊Easy

The Cultural Story

In Yoruba cuisine, gbegiri holds a position of quiet importance. On its own, it is a satisfying, protein-rich soup with a creamy, golden consistency that coats the tongue. But its truest calling is as one-third of abula — a sacred Yoruba culinary tradition where gbegiri, ewedu (jute leaf soup), and stew are deliberately ladled together over amala in a single bowl, their flavors intermingling in every scoop. The combination of the nutty bean soup, the slippery ewedu, and the tomato stew creates a complexity no single soup achieves alone. Gbegiri begins with black-eyed peas that are soaked and peeled to remove their skins — a labor of love that produces a lighter, smoother final soup. The beans are then cooked until completely soft and blended (traditionally with a mortar) into a velvety puree, seasoned with palm oil, iru (locust beans), and crayfish. At Nigerian restaurants from Ibadan to London's Peckham, ordering amala and abula is a rite of passage.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. 1Rub the soaked black-eyed peas between your palms to remove the skins. Rinse thoroughly in multiple changes of water until most skins are gone.
  2. 2Place peeled beans in a pot, cover generously with water, and boil until completely tender and starting to break apart, about 40–45 minutes. Add water as needed to keep beans covered.
  3. 3When beans are fully cooked and soft, mash or blend them in the pot using a wooden spoon, immersion blender, or traditional wooden ladle until the soup is smooth.
  4. 4Heat palm oil in a separate small pan. Add blended onion and scotch bonnet and fry for 3 minutes. Pour into the bean pot.
  5. 5Add iru, crayfish, seasoning cubes, and salt. Stir and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly to prevent sticking. Adjust consistency with water — gbegiri should be thick but pourable.
  6. 6Taste and adjust seasoning. The soup should be golden-yellow, smooth, and aromatic.
  7. 7Serve with amala and ewedu, or as a standalone soup with eba or fufu.
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