Watercress with Carrots and Corn in Pork Broth Chinese Soup
Soup Name: Watercress with Carrots and Corn in Pork Broth Chinese Soup
Traditional Chinese Name: 西洋菜燒豬湯 (xīyáng cài shāo zhū tāng). Literal translation is “watercress pork bone soup”. It’s a pretty generic term for most watercress soups and you mix and match the ingredients within it. This soup is known for it’s cooling properties, which is primarily driven by the watercress.
Nature: Slightly cooling in nature given the watercress (which are more yin in nature)
Taste: Sweet and savory
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Watercress is a common and popular household (and restaurant styled soup) in Hong Kong. Known for it’s cooling properties in the watercress, this leafy, vegetable is amazing in soups. Interestingly, the west use as it as a salad, but for the Chinese, it’s really the soup and sometimes in a fried vegetable dish, although not as much.
The one thing I remember about watercress soup growing up is… THE FLIES! LOL. I’m so serious. When this soup is served, the first thing my sisters and I will do is look for little dead flies that float on the top of the soup! So be sure to wash well, use salt as needed, and rinse it multiple times. All kids look for them – even my own now! LOL. So funny.
What’s involved?
Prep time: 20 minutes (blanching and washing)
Cook time: At least 1 hour for the soup base + 5 minutes after adding watercress. This will also depend on how crunchy or soft you like them!
Thermal pot cook time: 3 hours (or an eternity later)
Total time: 4 hour 30 mins
Serves: 8 bowls
Ingredients
- 5-6 pieces of pork leg bones
- 2 medium sized fresh carrots
- 2 fresh corn
- 1 bunch of fresh watercress
- 3 dried honey dates
- 4 dried shiitake mushrooms
- 1 small piece of dried tangerine peel
- 1 teaspoon of north and south apricot kernals
- 2.5 L of water
Cooking Instructions
- In your blanching pot, add cold water and drop in your pork bones. Allow that to come to a full boil. Drain and rinse multiple times under running water to clear out the debris, fat, and bone bits.
- Start boiling your soup water with 2.5L of cold water in a separate pot on high heat.
- Peel and chop your carrots into large bite-sized pieces.
- Quarter your corn.
- In a large bowl, add in your watercress with 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix this around thoroughly to let it wash out the bugs. I’ll let this sit for a bit as this is the ingredient you add last anyways.
- Once your soup water boils, add in your clean pork bones, carrots, corn, dried shiitake mushrooms, dried honey dates, dried apricot kernals, and the dried tangerine peel.
- Let that boil on medium heat for at least an hour.
- You can use an oil scooper to remove any debris and fat that has accumulated on top.
- Before 10 minutes of service, you can pour our the water of your soaking watercress, rinse a few times in cool water and drop into your soup. Serve and enjoy!
Equipment you may need:
This oil scooper is a must have for soups! Affordable and cheap, you can find this on Amazon.
My go to soup scooper is this silicon ladle. It’s huge, washes easily, heat resistant, and easy to use!
Why not make cooking fun? I use this salt shaker in both soups, my blanching pot, and washing the watercress.
These soup bags are super useful, especially if you don’t want the ingredients everywhere! You can check out this video here on how to use them.
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