Secret in Making Wonderful Chinese Soup

[Elaine.T]

To a lot of people when first approached to Chinese soup preparation, it is not easy to made a tasty and good quality soup. (At least I am one of them, )

Since it is not straight forward in preparing Chinese soup like cooking the western creamy soup, here are some tips that will help you at least make the healthy Chinese soup that is beneficial and delicious to your whole family.

Tips in making good quality Chinese soup:

1. Fresh and less fat ingredient is important. Example like skinny meat, fresh fish, shrimp, skinless duck meat or chicken, winter melon, bitter gourd, white carrot, yam, Chinese yam, tomatoes, seaweed, spring sprouts and others are good option for less fat ingredients.

2. Right selection of Chinese herbs since different herbs have different nutritious effects, the best is to understand the nature and effect of the herbs and what our body is lacking off. Example: If our body feel like very hot, ulcer inside the mouth or lips, pimples on your face, you should use some of this ingredients like green beans, seaweed, bitter gourd, lotus seed and etc as the ingredients in our soup. If you always catch cool, having cold palm or cold feet symptoms, you should take more "Yang" type of herbs like dried longan, ginger, and ginseng as the ingredients in your soup.

3. The water for soup making is advise to use mineral water for the best quality and taste.

4. When preparing the poultry for soup making, you must rinse and boil it in hot water for 5 minutes just to get rid of all the cloaked blood, fats and some dirty particles that stick on the surface or inside the bones. This will contributed into a better and sweeter soup at the end.

5. The fire or heat control in cooking soup is the most critical step. The same ingredients can have different taste and effect if the heat control is not properly handle. There 3 type of heat control - the big/high heating (fire), medium heating (fire), and small/low heating (fire). If the soup is always put in high heating position the protein in poultry will be destroyed. When in low heating, you are not allow to open the cover of the pot or add in extra water into it, as this will mix up the proposition of ingredient and water, also the temperature in the soup changed half way and impact the protein dissolving from the meat into the soup, hence impact the taste of the soup.

6. Only add in a dash of salt after the soup is ready to serve, else it will also causing protein in the meat hard to dissolve into the soup, and causing the soup tasteless.

7. For cooking fish soup, the best cooking duration is around 1 hour. For cooking chicken or pork spare ribs based soup, the best cooking duration is around 3 hours.

Just follow these tips, very soon and you will master the Chinese Soup cooking skills and be your family big chef in Chinese soup making.

Here is some of my findings on Chinese Herbal Soup Recipes to share for you all.