Chinese Soups – A Tiny Sampling Of A Vast Menu

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Beijing, Breakfast, China, Chinese, Eggs, Meat, Sichuan, Soup, Vegetables

Soups, or tang, play a huge role in the Chinese menu – they are served at breakfast and every other meal. Typically, there is a whole soup section on even a small street eatery’s menu, and contrary to the concept of a soup as a starter, it is treated as a main dish and comes in a huge bowl that will serve 2 to 3 people, if not more.

Ingredients and the level of spiciness vary widely between each soup, although there appear to be some favorites. I’ll present a brief sampling that contains most of the soups I had while in China:

1) A dish you will find almost anywhere (including Chinese textbooks!) and that is a traditional, homey meal all across China, is xi hong shi ji dan, or tomato & egg soup. Some are essentially egg drop soup with cubes of tomatoes, others have whole omelets in broth, and yet others are almost more of a tomato bisque with some egg swirled in.

Here’s a version I had in Beijing, which started my love affair with this dish:

In Chengdu, I got the slightly bizarre omelett-in-soup variety:

In Leshan in Sichuan province, I got a much more tomato-soup like version:

2) In Chengdu, I had a lovely soup consisting of broth with baby bok choy leaves – sounds plain, but really wasn’t! Plus, I did the Chinese thing and added some dark rice vinegar 🙂

3) Also in Chengdu, we had a lovely pork and mushroom soup that was earthy and flavorful:

4) In Beijing, in a tiny restaurant near Beihai Park, we got what I think is pretty much hot and sour soup with pork, as one knows it from Chinese restaurants around here:

5) In Emeishan, we had another batch of kelp soup, or hai dai tang, similar to a breakfast dish we had in Wenchuan. This was slippery to eat with chopsticks, and only for those that like chewy seaweed, but I loved it:

6) And finally, from Tangshan, a dish called yun nan guo qiao mi xian, or “noodles that cross the bridge”. This is a specialty containing extremely long rice flour noodles with meat of seafood balls (my version had shrimp balls) as well as some vegetables in a mild, clear broth that can be spiced up with pepper-oil. This is super filling, super cheap, and delicious dish!

So, as a bottom line, tang, or soup, is always a great, warming, filling option you’ll find anywhere, it’s low in calories, healthy, and flavorful, and you can hardly go wrong (Well, except maybe that omelet-soup…). Since you most likely will face many a menu that has no English whatsoever (or random English, with dishes translated as “not food”!), finding the character for tang can be an easy way to point and always get something good, with a surprise element.

What are some of your favorite soups? Are soups strictly a winter food for you? I didn’t expect I’d love hot soups in the heat of China, but it was actually really refreshing and helped me adjust.

Cha Dan (Tea Egg) Recipe

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China, Chinese, Eggs, Food, Tea Eggs

Since tea eggs, or cha dan, have been popping up in my Chinese breakfast and Chinese egg obsession posts, I figured I’d offer you a recipe.

I fell in love with cha dan during our trip and have been making them faithfully each week for a nice protein-rich kick start to my day. And so tasty!

Ingredients:
– 12 large eggs
– 1/2 reduced-sodium cup soy sauce
– 4 tea bags (black is best)
– 1 tsp black peppercorns
– 1 tsp cinnamon or one cinnamon stick
– 2 tsp Chinese five spice powder

Steps:
1. Cover eggs with water in a large pot, bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes.

2. Shock eggs under cold water. Make sure to reserve the boiling water; we’ll use it later!

3. Crack eggshells with the back of a knife

4. Add all other ingredients to the boiling water in a rice cooker, set to warm and add the eggs. Simmer for a minimum of 3 hours, but the longer the better (I often do 48 hours).

5. Let cool slightly before peeling

6. Enjoy tea-marbled, delicious goodness.

Are there any recipes you’ve brought home from your travels that have become a staple in your diet?

China And Its Obsession With Eggs

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China, Chinese, curiosities, Eggs, Food, Tea Eggs, Thousand Year Old Egg

For some reason, I hadn’t expected as many eggs in China as there are. I’m not talking quail eggs (great soup additions) here, but just plain chicken eggs. You know, the ones we buy in 6- or 12-packs here, that Chinese stores seem to sell in cartons of 65 minimum? Yeah. The Chinese love their eggs.

Eggs come in various dishes, especially soups and fried rice, but almost more importantly, they are eaten plain, as snacks or parts of a typical Chinese breakfast. By plain, I mean that you eat just that, the egg, but that does not mean that you should expect a simple hard-boiled egg without seasoning. Far from it.

Let’s start with tea eggs, called cha dan, which are closest to what a Westerner might expect when thinking of an egg. These come vacuum wrapped with or without the shell on in supermarkets or corner stores and don’t require refrigeration, but many breakfast carts or small snack shacks will have a large pot simmering, from which you fish the egg(s) of your choice still warm, peel it, and devour.

This one I got from a supermarket. When you open it, some of the marinade will drip out, and since this version comes pre-peeled, it looked a bit shrunken:

Tea eggs are essentially hard-boiled eggs that get soaked (with the shell on) in a mixture of tea, soy sauce and spices on a low simmer for several hours to days. The flavor will penetrate and stain the egg whites along cracks in the shell, though since this shell-less one was marinated more in the vacuum pack, it’s a uniform brown. This may not look wonderful, but believe me, cha dan are absolutely delicious! I’ll be posting a recipe soon, since these have become a breakfast staple of mine.

Now for something more unthinkable to the Western mind: pidan, or thousand-year-old eggs. These are not boiled, but rather preserved by smearing the shell with a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime (as in quicklime, a caustic chemical agent, not as in citrus lime!), and rice hulls. Despite the name of the dish, this process only lasts several weeks to several months, not one thousand years.

These also come prepackaged everywhere, but the version above is often available in supermarkets as well since it is preserved. They are extremely popular. They are also pretty much black, as the alkaline pH of the preserving mixture breaks down the egg protein, hardening both whites and yolk, producing strongly flavored compounds of a dark color.

The yolks are somehwat greenish:

Now, this is already a lot to process for the eye, add to it the sulfur/ammonia smell of the whole thing, and it becomes even more interesting. Pidan have a strong flavor that is a bit hard to describe, but not all-together unpleasant. The yolk is more intensely flavored than the white, but I’d say it’s an acquired taste. It wasn’t my favorite of the eggs I tried, but I would eat them again.

And finally, a nameless egg (mainly because I couldn’t find anyone after to explain to me the name) that was a local specialty around Mount Emei, one of the scared Buddhist mountains in China, located in Sichuan province. I got one on our 11 hour hike up to the summit, and consumed it in the sunrise of the next morning. I wish I had known these were local, I would bought tons and tons! I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful these tasted! Similar to pidan, these are preserved, though from all I’ve been able to find out, this process does not involve lime but rather the soil common to the area which appears to be high in salts:

When you open this up, a surprising, translucent egg awaits!

And then, then you take a bite. The white is somewhat gelatinous, but oh, the yolk. It is perfect. Creamy, almost custardy in texture, it just melts on your tongue with a mild, delicate flavour and leaves you craving more:

I’ve asked several Chinese from other areas but nobody has been able to tell me more about these. These don’t appear to come industrially distributed, since they rely on local soils and tastes, and I have been dreaming of these at night, I swear. If anyone has any information for me, please, please leave a comment!

Bottom line: You’ll find these eggs everywhere. I’ve gotten them anywhere from a shack on a sacred mountain several miles away from the next temple and even further from the next village to Carrefour, the Chinese version of a Super Target. They are cheap, easily portable for travelers and don’t require a cooling bag or any preparation, and they are a protein-rich snack that will keep you fueled on hikes through the Chinese mountains. As with any boiled egg, they clock in at 70 kcal.

So, what is your reaction to these eggs? I was very intimidated at first, but was very pleasantly surprised at what I found. Are there any crazy egg preparations you crave?

Chinese Breakfasts – An Overview

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bao zi, Beijing, Breakfast, Chengdu, China, Chinese, Congee, Eggs, Emeishan, Sichuan, Soup, Vegetables, Wenchuan

Breakfast, the most important meal of the day, right? Well, Chinese breakfast is nothing like American breakfast (or European breakfast, for that matter), and comes in many forms. I’ll attempt to give a basic overview over what you may encounter, focusing on the less figure-threatening options.

One of the most common things you’ll see, though not necessarily in hotels, is congee or konji, a very thin, watery rice porridge. Don’t think oatmeal consistency, think soup:

Congee itself is pretty flavorless, but what makes it delicious is the toppings that you add. Those range from fruit to fish, but the most common options will include all kinds of salty pickled vegetables (somewhat like pickled sushi ginger). This is not typically a breakfast that appeals to most Westerners, but you can get quite used to it. Due to the high water to rice ratio, the caloric count really isn’t too bad.

From here on, I’ll show pictures of various breakfasts I had on our trip. Let’s start with a breakfast I had in a little breakfast street kitchen in Wenchuan, Sichuan province:

This is a pretty typical assembly consisting of a tea egg or cha dan (a hard-boiled egg soaked in tea, soy sauce and spices), pickles, kelp soup or hai dai tang, and bao zi (stuffed steamed buns filled with either minced vegetables or meat). The bao zi clock in higher on the caloric scale with about 100kcal for a small steamed bun (fried bao zi are much, MUCH worse!), but one or two nicely beef up your breakfast. The kelp soup, consisting of long, noodle-shaped strips of seaweed in a clear broth, has about 85 calories per cup, and is especially nice on a cool morning. To enjoy this dish, you should definitely like the chewy texture of kelp.

Next, breakfasts in Chengdu, Sichuan province, at our hotel, which also served Chinese-style breakfast:

As you can see, there is broth and a tea egg again, and also some boiled baby bok choy (delicious!). There are also two cold dishes consisting of lettuce and Sichuan peppers (certainly wakes you up in the morning…), and the omnipresent wintermelon, a bitter melon shaped like a long, pockmarked cucumber that is incredibly popular in China. Very vegetable-heavy dishes, though larger buffets will have meat options and bao zi as well.

Same hotel, other morning. The same vegetable dishes, plus a small cake made of bean paste and seeds. I think this would have been better warm, but the one I got was pretty much cold and very gelatinous. I didn’t finish it.

Our hotel in Emeishan taught us that Chinese businessmen at breakfast are basically hyenas. I kid you not, there were war cries and head-first dives supported by copious use of elbows. To be fair, when I faught back with the same methods, I earned graciously given respect and managed to still get food on my plate before everything was gnawed down to the bone. This restaurant had very few meat options, so I loaded up on cauliflower (pretty much just steamed without flavour), pickled cucumber, pickled tomatoes and pickled napa cabbage (yes, pickles are essential for breakfast in China).

And the final breakfast also was from Emeishan: a hard-boiled egg (no tea involved), pickled cucumbers and napa cabbage, kelp strips in a Sichuan pepper marinade (cold, but it got me sweating profusely!) and a delicious, warm eggplant stir-fry with peppers that was less rabidly spicy.

And there you have it – I also just ate fruit from stalls or street carts on mornings where we didn’t get breakfast or there were no options that appealed to me, and there are also copious little carts that pop up around breakfast times that will serve bao zi and similar items in steamer baskets.

What is your preferred breakfast? Being German, I’ve always preferred a savory, cold breakfast, but how do you respond to that? And as always, if there is anything specific you’d like to ask, shoot!