Asian Style Noodle Soup with Greens
Prep: the vegetables need to be washed and trimmed. If you are using chicken, it needs cutting. Soup takes about 70 minutes to cook. It may be left on the stove over very low heat up to three hours.
Yield: approximately 6-8 cups soup
Please read the notes, below, before starting to cook.
4 dried Chinese mushrooms
1 star anise
1 slice fresh ginger
2-3 garlic cloves
4-6 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced
2 ounces/1/4 cup/60 grams fresh shittake mushrooms (or more, if wished)
1-1.5 pounds/454-680 grams Bok Choy, Baby Bok Choy, Chinese Broccoli, Gai Lan, or other greens
peanut or other mild oil, for the soup pot
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth, homemade or low salt commercial broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce (not “lite”)
2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
2 tablespoons Chinkiang or Brown Rice Wine Vinegar (not Mirin!)
2 teaspoons sugar; taste: you may need to add more
a tiny smatter of hot red pepper flakes
Generous drizzle sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste
approximately 1 pound/454 grams boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2-4 ounces/60-80 grams dried or fresh noodles per diner
Fresh cilantro
To serve at table:
soy sauce
chili paste or hot pepper oil
Chinkiang or brown rice vinegar
Heat just under 1/2 cup water in a microwave safe bowl. Carefully add dried mushrooms. I poke them down with a spoon. Leave to soak for at least 20 minutes. They can sit up to four hours.
Slice ginger thinly–no need to peel. Set aside.
Crush and peel garlic. Mince and place with ginger.
Trim scallions and slice thinly. Put with ginger and garlic.
Wipe Shittake mushroom caps. Trim stems. Slice mushrooms thinly. Set aside.
Wash greens thoroughly, ensuring no grit lingers in leaves or stems. Dry just enough to prevent water splattering all over your cutting board. Chop greens into pieces, remembering they will be eaten with a spoon.
Place your largest soup pot on the stove. Pour about two tablespoons peanut oil into the pot and heat to medium low. There should be enough oil to cover entire bottom of pot. Add more if necessary.
Add garlic, ginger, scallions, and star anise to pot. Cook at gentle simmer, stirring often, for about 8 minutes. Do not allow ingredients to brown.
Add shittake mushrooms and greens to pot.
Check on dried mushrooms: they should be soft now. Squeeze them dry and slice thinly, discarding hard stem. Soaking water may be poured through a coffee filter or fine strainer and added to soup pot.
Add broth to pot. There should be enough to cover ingredients by 2-3 inches/4-7 cm. Bring soup to simmer.
Season soup with soy sauce, rice wine, vinegar, sugar, hot pepper flakes, sesame oil, salt, and pepper.
Allow soup to simmer gently for just over an hour, stirring occasionally.
Taste for salt, sugar, and pepper. If you think soup needs more soy, rice wine, or vinegar, add it in 1/2 teaspoon amounts. You can always add more.
45 minutes before serving time, slice chicken into spoon-sized pieces. Add to broth. Do not taste broth until chicken has cooked through; this takes about 30 minutes.
I used dried noodles that take minutes to cook, so prepare them just before serving the soup. Prepare your noodles accordingly. Fresh noodles take only 2-3 minutes.
Serve soup either in a large tureen or individual bowls.
Top each serving with a scattering of fresh cilantro leaves. (Unless you have cilantro haters at the table!)
Asian Style Noodle Soup with Greens keeps, refrigerated, up to three days; to keep refrigerated longer, reheat thoroughly.
Freeze soup up the three months.
Notes:
As mentioned in the post, Asian Style Noodle Soup with Greens is infinitely flexible. Pretty much every ingredient in the recipe may be replaced: use chard instead of Bok Choy, firm tofu instead of chicken, vegetable broth instead of chicken, and so on.
Use one green or a mixture: I used bok choy and spinach.
Replace noodles with rice: either cook in the soup or prepare separately. Preparing the rice separately allows you to serve it separately. Rice cooked in the soup with soften, swell, and expand.
A wide variety of Asian noodles are available at Asian markets and better supermarkets. This is a question of personal preference. If you cannot find Asian noodles, dried or fresh Italian noodles are fine. Use your favorite, or seek out wide, flat noodles.
Like rice, noodles swell when left in the soup pot. To avoid this, prepare and serve noodles separately. This is wise if you want to freeze any leftover soup, as frozen cooked noodles become mushy.