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