Slow-cooked Soup

Most Chinese will have a soup dish on the dining table and hence the common phrase 三菜一湯. We don't cook 3 dishes and 1 soup all the time unless we have more people over for meals. For the two of us, we sometimes cook one big pot of soup and have just that for our dinner.

I love to cook soups using my beloved slow cooker which has been with me for about 20 years. When I was still working, I normally throw in the ingredients for the soup in the morning and set it to cook in low heat. When we were back from work, a pot of delicious soup was ready for us. Soups cook in low heat will be clearer yet have all the flavours from the ingredients added. This is the reason why we continue to cook our soup and even homecooked stock using our slow cooker.

Watercress Pork Rib Soup

One of our favourite soups is the Watercress Pork Rib Soup. We drink this soup since young and whenever I can get watercress from the grocery store, I will cook this soup.

Ingredients

300g            Pork ribs

250g            Chicken feet (optional)

1 packet      Watercress

2                   Sour plum

Seasoning:

Salt

White pepper

Instructions

1. Cut and separate the stems and leaves of the watercress.
2. Blanch the pork ribs in a pot of water. The scums from the pork ribs will float onto the surface of the water. 
3. Transfer the pork ribs, without the scums, to the slow cooker pot.
4. Add chicken feet to have an even nicer broth that has a gelatin texture.
5. Add the stems and half of the leaves of the watercress into the pot. I have added the watercress in two different batches. The watercress flavour will be infused in the soup with the first batch added. The remaining leaves will be added later so that they will not be too mushy.
6. Add the sour plums.
7. Boil a pot or kettle of water. Pour the boiling water into the slow cooker pot. This will allow the soup to start its slow cooking immediately.
8. Switch on the slow cooker and cook in low heat for about 8 hours. The longer it cooks, the better is the flavour.
9. Add the remaining watercress leaves 1 to 2 hours before eating.
10. Add some salt and white pepper before serving.