Superior Double Boiled Chinese Cabbage Soup

Since Chinese New Year is approaching where everyone is whipping up their best dish, I thought I would share another lunar festive recipe again. The Chinese long cabbage is always in abundance during the lunar festival and most households will commonly stock up this vegetable, usually for soup broth in Pen Cai or just purely for hotpot purposes. And so with a little twist, I used it in a double boiled soup where the soup ingredients are wrapped and cooked within the cabbage itself. Thereafter the leaves of the cabbage are opened up liked a “soup bowl” which make it very presentable and pretty.

The gist of this dish itself is actually the presentation of the cabbage and soup at the end of it. While I had the soup ingredients with some of the common items that we often stocked up in the fridge liked mushrooms, carrots, chicken and meatballs, you are free to replace them with anything of your choice. Usually I preferred to incorporate the water that’s being used to soak mushrooms and scallops into the cooking itself as they are natural seasoning, so be sure to give them a rinse first before soaking them to use.

The “double boiled” in Chinese cooking also meant that the soup is steamed over 2 layers of segregation and in this case, the real soup bowl is one and the “cabbage soup bowl” is another. 2 hours is quite a bare minimum for double boiling over the stove but there are also ready electrical appliances in the market that caters to such usage which probably can shorten the time. Hope this recipe is in time for the CNY menu planning !

Superior Double Boiled Chinese Cabbage Soup

Recipe by Eat What TonightCourse: MainCuisine: ChineseDifficulty: Easy

Servings

3

servings

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

2

hours 

Ingredients

• 1 long white cabbage, approx 800g-1kg

• 10 dried scallops

• 5 dried shitake mushrooms, sliced (soak in water overnight with dried scallops and retain the mushroom scallop water)

• Few thick slices of carrots

• 100g boneless chicken, diced

• 8 pcs of meatballs

• 1 tbsp cooking oil

• 1 tsp minced garlic

• Some wolfberries (for garnish)

• Seasoning (combine together) :

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• 1 tsp light soya sauce

• Few drops of dark soya sauce

• 2 tsp Chinese cooking wine

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Thickening :

• 1 tsp corn flour mixed with 2 tbsp water

  
  

Directions

• Open up the cabbage and spread the leaves open. Cut off the center part.
• Boil some water and place the cabbage upside down into the water and soak it for 30 mins.
• Remove the cabbage, rinse with tap water and squeeze away the excess water. Place the cabbage in a deep steaming bowl and spread open the leaves. Allow it to dry up briefly.
• In the meantime, heat up cooking oil and sauté garlics until fragrant. Add in the scallops, mushrooms, carrots and stir fry to mix well.
• Add in diced chicken, seasoning and corn flour solution. Stir fry to combine.
• Fill up the cabbage with the ingredients from Step 5 along with the meatballs on top. Tie up the cabbage with a cooking string.
• Add the scallop mushroom water into the steaming bowl and place the bowl on rack into pot filled with water and steam it for 2 hours.
• Once done, remove from heat. Remove the string and open up the cabbage. Fold the ends of the cabbage down and garnish with some wolfberries. Serve hot immediately and enjoy !