Arrowroot and Water Chestnuts Vegetarian Soup
Soup Name:
Arrowroot and Water Chestnuts Vegetarian Soup
Traditional Chinese Name:
馬蹄粉葛湯 (mǎtí fěn gé tāng)
This soup is great for heated bodies and sore throats. It is mildly cooling, but extremely soothing with it’s sweet taste and smoothness.
Since it’s meat free, it’s completely oil free and by adding more carrots, you can sweeten it to the point where you can consider drinking it cold (definitely tasted amazing cold because it really helped cool my poor, fiery throat).
You can consider adding other ingredients as well, such as corn, onions, pumpkin or even meats (pork, chicken or fish are all good meats to “salty” up the soup).
What’s involved?
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 1 hour and 30 mins
Total time: 1 hour and 45 mins
Serves: 6 bowls
Ingredients
1 arrowroot, peeled & sliced
10-15 fresh water chestnuts
2 fresh carrots, cut into large pieces
1 peel of dried tangerine peel
Cooking Instructions
- Peel and cut arrowroot into large cubes
- Wash & peel water chestnuts
- Wash, peel and cut carrots into large cubes
- Wash and prepare dried tangerine peel (by scraping it with a flat knife on both sides)
- Boil your soup water and when it boils, add all the ingredients together
- Boil on high for thirty minutes and reduce to medium boil for another hour
- Serve and enjoy!
- Can be served cold, so you can refrigerate before serving
Any benefits?
- Helps eliminate sore throats and heaty bodies
- It is a mildly cooling soup
- It’s quite diverse in that you can add meats (to make it more salty or just add salt in moderation) or keep it a sweet, cold drink and refrigerate prior to consumption
- Excellent for young children
It’s a shame that there’s no substitute for arrowroot. It’s my fave soup but impossible to get in Dubai. My mom always makes me gallons of this stuff when I’m home in the States.
Have you any idea if I can substitute the dates I get in the Middle Eastern markets? (Ran out of “mut jo” – the ones you have in the photo) Will throw a few in as an experiment anyway…
Wow, that’s a tough one. I’m not sure what they carry in Dubai! Arrowroot can be substituted with Lotus roots too, that is if they are available. As for “mut jo”, you can try dried figs as well (which are also available in European countries are well, not sure about Middle East). Hope this helps, although it’s not much! They don’t have a large supply of Chinese imported goods? Lisa
Hi, for soups for kids, can I blend the ingredients with soup in a blender for my 7-month old?
Or just let him drink the soup only, without the ingredients?
I don’t see why not, so long as all the ingredients are things they can eat (ie: lotus roots, corn, veggies). It’s probably healthy too. I used to mix the soup into congee and rice and they liked it like that too. Hope this helps! Lisa
Hi Lisa,
I ended up throwing in the Middle Eastern dates and they seemed to work fine. There are a few specialty Chinese markets in Dubai but quite a drive so for a quick soup, I often just use whatever is left in my pantry.
Thanks for the idea with the lotus root substitution. Have seen those here for sure!
Sandy