Hey guys, I'm Flo of allnigerianrecipes.com.
If you watched my Nigerian food ingredients haul video where
I showed you all the ingredients I brought back with me from Nigeria,
in this video, I'll share how I store and preserve all those ingredients
especially the fresh vegetables.
Let's go!
I'll start with the dry ingredients.
I keep some of them, the quantity I will need in the near future in this cupboard,
this cupboard that covers my extractor.
It's just above my cooker.
That's where I keep them, any cool dry play will do.
I keep the rest of the dry ingredients in a bigger cupboard somewhere else.
This one is bay leaf, it's not even Nigerian so everyone knows this one.
I keep my next in line to use (next in line to the throne) Ogbono in this bag.
I grind my Ogbono in small batches and this is where I keep it.
In this container I have the ones that did not grind very well.
In this one I have ground Ogbono that is ready for use.
If you watch my grinding ogbono cooking peeve video
you will understand these two containers.
This is the pack of Ogbono itself.
Egusi.
This is dry ukwa.
I think this one is cocoyam flour.
These are ehu seeds.
I have a lot of them in another cupboard.
This is achicha ede!
One of my favourite Igbo foods!
I'm traditional like that.
Raise your hands if you know achicha ede.
It's so delicious when prepared well.
This is uda, grains of selim.
It's hot and spicy used in suya spice and pepper soup for new mums.
Uziza seeds, that's false cubeb.
This one is Cameroon pepper, very hot and spicy.
Kuka powder for Miyan Kuka.
Dry scent leaves.
We have harmattan kind of weather here right now so
by the next day after we came back from Nigeria,
some of the scent leaves have dried up.
Crunchy dry.
I'll be adding them to yam or potato porridge.
Nothing goes to waste in my house!
Powdered edible potash.
Crayfish, this crayfish is the one I will use in the near future.
The rest are in the freezer.
Dry cayenne pepper.
I keep the ground one in this jar.
And the ground crayfish in this container.
I grind all these in small quantities.
These are dry Zobo for Zobo drink.
I have a video for that.
This one is alum.
I used it for a demo in a video.
Some flour.
I don't know which flour.
This is dry bitter leaves.
I only use this when I run out of freshly washed ones.
I have a video of how to soften these dry ones before you use them in Nigerian cooking.
Moving on ...
This is stock fish.
I just put them in Ziploc bags and put in the freezer.
The same with dry fish.
The freezer is the best place to store dry fish and stock fish
because if you keep them outside, in your cupboard even if it is one weevil that followed
them back from Nigeria,
that one weevil will multiply into one million weevils and finish the fish.
So when you hit the fish like this, fish dust and weevils will fly out.
Check out this one we saw in Nigeria.
But in very cold temperatures of the freezer,
the weevils if any will die off.
Another reason why it is necessary to put it in the freezer
is that these smell so much especially stock fish.
You don't want your whole house to be smelling fishy fishy like some Nigerian people's homes.
If you put it in the cupboard, your kitchen if not your whole house will smell like eau
de stockfish.
For the ugba or ukpaka, the ugba I buy in Nigeria is
usually freshly shredded ugba so it is hard and feels like rubber in the mouth.
In that state, it does not integrate well in Nigerian cooking.
And no matter how long you cook it, it will still have that rubbery feel.
What I do when I come back here is remove it from the plastic wrapping,
put it in a bowl,
cover it like this
leave it on my kitchen table to soften a little bit.
This softening is mild fermentation.
So I leave it and check it every day and mix it so that it will soften evenly.
Once it softens to the way I like it, this one has been here for 2 days,
I put it in ziploc bags and put in my freezer and that stops the fermentation process.
Finally to the leaves and vegetables.
First the uma leaves for wrapping Nigerian Moi Moi.
These are not banana leaves.
You can see how small they are and these are the biggest of uma leaves.
I wash them thoroughly with plenty of water and a foam sponge and store in my freezer.
I have a video of how to do that in detail.
For the leafy vegetables I cook with, I patiently pick them.
With these vegetables, you need to act fast.
It's exactly 48 hours since I bought them from the market.
I usually buy the leafy vegetables the same day I'll leave Nigeria.
So I bought them the day before yesterday.
We left Nigeria in the night of the same day.
We arrived here yesterday night and first thing this morning
I have to work on these vegetables else they will all decay on me.
So this is not a matter of I am tired, you need to do it as soon as you arrive.
This one is uziza leaf, false cubeb.
I showed the seeds earlier in the video.
This is the ora.
Ora is a very soft vegetable, you can see signs of going bad.
Then I rinse them in plenty of cool water.
I even add salt while rinsing.
And pick out the ones that are going bad.
Then I put them in sieves to drain the water as much as possible.
Slice them up.
And put single use portions in plastic bags with emphasis on single use.
You'll understand that later.
Then put in the freezer immediately.
Ok moving on to the freezer.
Now everything is frozen.
This is the ugba.
This is scent leaf.
Yes, I label them because when they are frozen, they all look similar to me.
With the labelling, it is easier for me to pick the one I want.
You can see that in their frozen state they are all still green.
And once this freezer is constantly on as in working,
they will remain like that for a long time.
Here's the yellow pepper.
These are the ones that felt the heat of the travel.
I will start using from these ones.
The snails.
These ones were prepped in Nigeria so all I needed to do was put them back in the freezer.
The freshly washed bitter leaves, again already prepped in Nigeria.
If we go deeper, you will find stock fish, crayfish, dry fish, periwinkle, all of them
go in the freezer.
This one is the ponmo, cow skin.
The uma leaves.
That's it.
This video highlights why you deep freezer is important in any Nigerian kitchen.
You can see that I just have only Nigerian food ingredients in that freezer
and my freezer is already filled up.
I have not even prepared soups, stews ...
I have not made Moi Moi, I have not made meat pies.
All these I prepare in bulk and store in my freezer.
I'll have to put them in the freezer compartment of my fridge freezer.
I hope you learnt something new from this video.
Ehe lest I forget, the way I use these vegetables is:
For instance if I want to cook Ora Soup, I just start cooking the ora soup as usual.
When it's time for me to add ora,
I bring out one plastic bag of ora from the freezer.
I remove the plastic wrapping, still in the frozen state o.
Then throw the frozen vegetable into the boiling pot of ora soup.
Cook for a few minutes then take it off the stove.
That way, the vegetable remains green and the aroma of the ora is intact
because it has been in the freezer all these while.
Nothing has happened to the taste.
The food is as good as when fresh ora leaves are used.
I'm telling you.
Bye see you soon!
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