Chinese Mushroom Chicken soup

Chinese Mushroom Chicken soup

            This is a very traditional soup that people use to make at home for their family and some Chinese restaurant serve this soup as well. When I was a child, I used to live with my grandma and my grandma made the soup once I get sick. I learn how to make this soup from my grandma before I came to Canada. I love this soup cause it gives me a lot of the memories.

Recipe:

Quantity:	Ingredient:	Equipment:
100 g	Chicken (Lag or wing)	Chef’s knife
15 g	Ginger	Wooden spoon
1 ea.	Garlic	Containers
1 ea.	Green onion	Tea spoon
2 tsb	Salt	Soup pot
50 ml	Cooking wine
10 ml	Sesame oil
10 ea.	Chinese dry mushroom
1 tsb	Chinese Lycium

Steps:

a.     Put the dry mushroom in a bowl and add cold water.

b.     Cut the chicken into small pieces and then wash. Use cold water to cook the chicken in a soup pot until the color of the chicken become white. Then turn off the heat.

c.      Dump the water and wash the chicken again, then add cold water into the soup pot to cook the chicken again.

d.     Cut the ginger, mushroom and green onion. Smash the garlic.

e.     Once the soup become boil add garlic, ginger and mushroom into the soup. Turn the heat to medium.

f.      When the soup become boil again adds cooking wine, Sesame oil，mushroom water and Chinese Lycium in the soup and turn the heat to low.

g.     It takes about 15 minutes to cook the soup and then add salt to season it. Add the green onion before serve the soup.

Taste:

This soup tasted salty, not too strong and a little bit sweet (very little).

This soup smelled with very strong Chinese mushroom smell, chicken stock and a little of the wine.

Did anyone tried:

In my family, everyone tried the soup already. Jason Chen, my best friend in high school and he was my partner when I was working a Chinese restaurant. He tried the soup; he said “this soup makes me miss my family and home. The taste of the soup is very good and the Chinese mushroom smells very strong. The most important thing for this soup is the taste and smell of ginger is not too much. There is a little bit of the smell of garlic in the soup. This is a very good Chinese soup.”

What were the challenges involved?

There were two challenges when I was going to make this soup.

1.     Ingredients, there were few things like, Chinese mushroom or Chinese Lycium, its really hard to find them in local market.

2.     The heat and time, the heat that most of people use at home is electric wok it is not the real gas wok that people use in restaurant. Therefor the temperature and time to cook become different.

Was it a success?

This soup was well done when I made it at home. Somehow I think the soup was still a little bit oily. Totally the soup is good and nice.

What would you do differently?

Because the wok is different, therefore the soup was a little bit oily then it should be. There is a way that can help in this case; it is double wash the chicken after the chicken was cooked. And make sure the temperature wont get too high. That could help for the oily problem.

Final:

Reflect to my experience, I would take away the time of cooking. Because in every different wok, the temperature its different then it will effect on the time of the cooking. I learn from this time is time of cooking is not really have to be always the same. We need to change the time while we change the place to work. Without the timing system, I can check the difference of the dish more often while I am cooking. This could help me for more experience of timing skill or checking food skill in the future when I working in kitchen.