Mustard Green Chicken Soup A Taiwanese New Year Dish
Mustard Green Chicken Soup is one of our traditional Taiwanese New Year dishes. The long stalk from the vegetable represents long life and it’s simply a great dish for Chinese New Year.
The Mustard Green vegetable is also known as Brassica Juncea. It’s a kind of mustard plant that not only Chinese people use in their food but also Indian. It has a very unique taste that has a kind of horseradish-mustard flavour. Another thing worth mentioning about Mustard Green is it’s healthy benefits.
Mustard Green contains high levels of Vitamin K, C and A as well as being a good source of folic acid. Mustard Green also provides a rich source of anti-oxidants and flavonoids which can help the body prevent prostate, breast, colon and ovarian cancers.
Regular consumption of mustard greens in the diet is known to prevent arthritis, osteoporosis, iron deficiency, anaemia and is believed to protect from cardiovascular diseases, asthma and colon and prostate cancers.
I love drinking hot soup in the winter. Maybe it’s me but this winter seems to have been particularly long so whenever I get a chance I make a hot soup. It’s comfortable, warm and keeps your whole body warm during the winter.
Last week I had a speech about eating Chinese food in Glasgow as part a Chinese New Year festival and one of the foods I was promoting was soup.
SOUP is a really important part of Chinese cuisine. Chinese and Taiwanese soups are completely different to western soups. A lot of western soups are cooked using butter and cream but we like to think of our soup as art.
In Chinese cooking, we use many different ingredients for soup but our soups are seasonal and also medicinal. If I’m sick with flu for example, I like to add a bit of ginger in my soup. A lot of Chinese people will also put different kinds of Chinese medicine in their soups to maintain their bodies and improve their health. As you can tell, it’s very different with Chinese cooking. A good soup can be healthy, filling, good for your belly, improve your stamina and strengthen your health.
So this mustard green chicken soup not only has a great meaning but is really great for your health. It’s a really supern dish to start your New Year with.
Credit: All photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com
Mustard Green Chicken Soup A Taiwanese New Year Dish
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken cut into pieces
- 800 g mustard green cut into 3-5cm lengthways
- 3 pieces ginger
- salt
- pepper
Instructions
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Blanch the chicken and rinse under cold water to give it a quick wash. This process gets rid of any unpleasantness from the chicken.
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Put the chicken into a stockpot and add ginger. Add water until the contents of the stockpot are covered. Boil it first then simmer for 1 and half hour.
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Check the chicken meat is soft and put the mustard green into the soup to cook along with the chicken. Season the soup and it’s ready to serve.
This looks and sounds so great and it looks pretty easy to make! Thank you for sharing such a nice recipe. Are mustard greens typically available at grocery store or will I have to check International markets?
Thanks for your comment. I bought mustard greens from one of my local Chinese supermarkets but I’ve never seen it at a regular supermarket. It might be a different situation in different countries, ie US, but they’re quite rare here.
I hope you had fun doing your speech and what a treat for all of the attendees. I also love soup, year round, even in the middle of Summer I like soup. This sounds so warming and healthy. I think I’ll have to make a batch soon. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Hi Nancy, happy valentine’s day to you also. The speeches were quite good fun, got asked a lot of questions but it was also quite nerve wracking. Soup is great anytime of the year but especially when it’s cold 😀 Hope you like it if you have a go at making it.
Nothing can beat a warm bowl of soup in cold winter days, especially if it’s made with chicken. Your soup looks very easy to make but amazingly tasty. Koreans make soup by boiling chicken with aromatics, but mustard green is new. I think it’s a great idea. Thanks.
Hi, thank you for your comment. I don’t know a lot about Korean food but cooking with aromatics sounds really good. Mustard greens are new to a lot of people, for example my husband had never heard of them, but they have a really unique flavour. Thanks.
This soup is new to me, but it contains all the ingredients I love!
Thank you for your comment. I hope you can have a go at making this recipe. With all the ingredients put together it’s really tasty.
I just got some mustard greens from my share. So glad I found this recipe.
Thanks for your message. Happy you found my recipe and that’s cool you found mustard greens.
Sounds like a fantastic speech, hope you had fun 🙂 Lovely soup recipe and adorable little soup bowl 🙂
Thank you for your comment. The speech was quite fun but also a bit nerve wracking 😀
Good job, I am loving it.