The Food Site

For the longest time ever, beehoon soup or vermicelli soup is one of The Food Critic’s favourite food. He eats it when he has the flu. He eats it when he is overworked. He eats it whenever he is in need of some warm comforting food. Now, I’m not much of a fan but over time (after ten years of having to eat this meal with him), I acquired some taste for it. As long as I have some chili padi to go with it, I’m fine.

Still, I don’t quite like going to the hawker stalls for a bowl of beehoon soup. That’s because most hawkers like to add MSG into the soup to make it tasty. And some are so oily, it makes me gag. So, once in a while I will try to cook the homemade version of beehoon soup. But today, I am sharing with you The Food Critic’s very own recipe, not mine. Since he loves beehoon soup, naturally, he also knows how to cook it. Yes, that’s how he earned the other nickname My Personal Chef. He does cook occasionally.

Since he cooks by estimation, the recipe below will consists of all guess-timate amounts.

Homemade Beehoon Soup Recipe

Ingredients

10 tbsp minced chicken, seasoned with some salt or light soy sauce

About 5 leaves of Chinese white cabbage, chopped

2 – 3 pods garlic

An assortment of fishballs and beancurd (as below)

Mint leaves (for garnishing)

1 large carrot, sliced thinly

1 cup fresh beansprouts

half cube of chicken stock

dash of salt (optional)

3 – 4 cups water

150g brown rice vermicelli, soaked to soften

Instructions

1. Heat up the water in a pot / wok. Once it comes to a boil, add the chicken stock cube.

2. Then add the Chinese white cabbage and garlic.

3. Remember to keep the heat at medium to low so that the water is simmering and not boiling.

4. Add in the minced chicken by tablespoons-ful so as to form small meatballs (as pictured below).

5. Once the chicken is almost cooked when it has turned pale and are no longer pink, then add in the beancurd and fishballs:

6. Let the soup come to a boil. Then it is time to add in the vermicelli.

7. Now, if you prefer your carrots and beansprouts to be cooked, then it is time to add those in. Since I like them to be on the raw side, I just add them as garnishings. The vermicelli cooks very easily so once you put it in, let it boil for a minute or so and it is ready to be served hot!

8. Just ladle the vermicelli and ingredients into a bowl, add the carrots and beansprouts and then garnish with mint leaves.

Vermicelli absorbs water pretty fast so it is best to serve immediately or else you will find that the soup is all gone! Oh and I preferred the beansprouts to be raw (or half raw since it is partially cooked when the scalding hot soup was poured on it) because I bought organic beansprouts which do not have the nasty raw flavour. Instead, it is pretty sweet and crunchy to boot.

It took me about five minutes to take some shots of the beehoon soup, just look how much of the soup has ‘disappeared’! This is best eaten with some fresh cut chilies dipped in light soy sauce. Yum! And that’s not all, since the vermicelli soup has minimal oil and with loads of vegetables, it is quite, quite healthy too.

Of course, you can always leave out the beansprouts or substitute it with other vegetables like choy sum / siew pak choy or even celery / broccoli although the taste will differ slightly.

Having a steamboat meal for the Chinese New Year reunion dinner has been one of the age-old traditions in most Chinese families. As far as I know, each and every one of our reunion dinner involved a lavish steamboat dinner complete with loads of fishballs, chicken, fish and seafood.

So, this year, it is no different in my house where we coordinated a lavish seafood steamboat dinner good enough to choke our arteries and have a steamy time. Heheh. Team the steamy steamboat with our hot and humid weather, we have our regular steam bath right in my living room!

Here’s my steamboat soup recipe:

Seafood Steamboat Base Soup Recipe

Ingredients

4 pc dried scallops (as pictured below)

1 medium sized turnip (as pictured below)

1 medium sized burdock root (as pictured below)

2 carrots

3 tbsp kei chee (dried wolfberries)

2 – 3 garlic pods

water

Instructions

1. Clean and skin the burdock and turnip, then cut into large chunks like below.

2. Boil a pot of water

3. Dump all the ingredients in and let it simmer over low heat for about an hour and the soup is ready to use!

Now, the reason that I didn’t add any kinds of meat is because we preferred a clearer and milder soup so that after putting all the other steamboat ingredients in, we won’t get an overly cloying soup. For the raw ingredients we have loads of salmon, cod fish, fish balls, sui kow (chinese dumplings), tiger prawns, crabs, mushrooms, Japanese tofu, chicken breast meat, green vegetables and squid.

Since we have salmon, naturally, we also have some salmon sashimi:

And here’s our steamboat spread…

Steamboat is probably one of the easiest meals to have but don’t be fooled as the preparation time takes up to two hours since I have to slice the fish and chicken, open the cans (for the mushrooms), wash the vegetables, crack the crab shells, etc, etc, and then arrange it all on large plates.

It being a reunion dinner, of course, it also takes hours to enjoy a steamboat meal since it involved dumping the ingredients into the soup and sitting around chatting and waiting for it to boil.