Quick Recipe: Chicken Long Rice Soup

chicken long rice soup

Chicken Long Rice Soup (ProTip: there's no rice in it - the name comes from the 'cellophane' noodles) is a Hawaiian favorite, or so I am told. It seemed like the perfect cold weather treat, but after getting all my ingredients together, I discovered that the recipe I found was, frankly, a disaster, with scattershot directions and some pretty inefficient methods. I decided it was worth fixing, though, so my pain is your gain.

Ingredients:

  • 2.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs OR about 3 pounds chicken leg quarters
  • 3, 32 ounce cartons of chicken broth
  • 1 half-inch piece of fresh ginger root
  • 1 large sweet Maui onion
  • 1 package of bean thread noodles (typically 6-8 ounces, also sold as cellophane or glass noodles)
  • 1 bunch of green onions
  • 1 small head of bok choy
  • Hawaiian sea salt and cracked pepper to taste

Directions:

  • In a large pot, put your chicken in with the broth. For convenience, it's hard to beat frozen boneless, skinless thighs, but if you prefer fresh chicken, go for it. Whatever you do, DON'T use chicken breast meat. It will make for very bland soup - dark meat is the way to go here.
  • Peel and slice the ginger into thin slices and add to the broth as well. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 35 minutes to thoroughly cook the chicken.
  • While that's cooking, fill a large bowl with hot tap water and add the noodles so they will soften. Prep your onion by cutting it into half-inch by half inch slices, dice your green onions (don't forget to save and plant the roots, so you have fresh green onions all the time...) and chop the bok choy.
  • After 35 minutes, take the soup off the heat and pull out the chicken. If you used boneless, skinless thighs, you'll just need to cut it into bite size pieces, but if you used fresh you'll have to remove the skin and bones from the meat before cutting it up. 
  • At this point we want to clarify the broth a bit by removing the ginger and other solid bits, so you can either skim that out, or pour the broth through a strainer into another (heat resistant!) container before returning it to the now-clean pot. 
  • Add the onion to the broth and bring it back to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the bok choy and green onion, and drain the noodles and add them too. It may be easier to simply use your clean hands to lift the noodles a bit at a time from the bowl and let them drain before putting them into the pot, rather than fighting with them slipping through the holes in a colander.
  • Once everything is together, let it simmer for another 10 minutes or so, until the vegetables and noodles are tender. As it's simmering, add salt (taste the broth as you go - unless it says "low sodium," packaged chicken broth usually brings plenty of salt to the party with it) and pepper to taste. If you like to live dangerously (or if you simply don't believe the myths about it), a little bit of MSG will also help liven up all the flavors.
  • Serve and enjoy!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pizza Crunch - An Answer to a Question Nobody Asked

Image
Scotland has a complicated relationship with food. They've given the world haggis, Gordon Ramsey, and Scotch whisky, so it's hard to really classify their national contribution to cuisine in terms of friend or foe. But as a culture with a legendary reputation (deserved or not) for 1) enjoying a wee dram, and 2) being willing to eat just about anything, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that one of the world's greatest "I'd have to be super-drunk to eat that" foods, the so-called Pizza Crunch, is popular in the UK's hat.  In the video we bring to you today, we see the process of making a Pizza Crunch from start to finish, and unless you already have a cocktail or two under your belt, it's unsettling. It begins with removing a small, frozen pizza (in this case, apparently plain cheese) from the freezer, and without even taking it out of the plastic bag, portioning it into two halves.  Dude, seriously. I know it's a crappy Zyliss serrat
Read more

A Modest Proposal: Stop Lying About When You're Open

Image
Today, I'd like to open a huge can of worms and discuss a topic that is sure to trigger a lot of restaurant and hospitality workers; namely, inconsiderate, clueless customers who come in "too late" and make the entire staff angry. I see it all the time on Reddit and Facebook - posts raging about patrons who come in "ten minutes before closing" and have the nerve to expect to be served. These subhuman monsters see that an establishment's listed hours are something like "11AM - 9PM" and actually believe they can exchange money for food and service during that entire period. They either don't understand or don't care that there is some unspecified period of time before the listed closing that is the real break point after which the staff no longer wants you to come in. Typically, these posts are some variation on a common theme of, "It's just common sense to know that you don't come in 15/30/45/60 minutes before closing and ex
Read more

Why Do People Love The Cheesecake Factory?

Image
This is NOT a good thing... So, my local Facebook "community talk" groups have been clogged the last few days with one post after another asking the same question: "When is the new Cheescake Factory going to open?" People are treating this event with the same crazed enthusiasm that went along with our bucolic little valley getting its first Golden Corral buffet restaurant (and the same total lack of the ability to search to see if the question has already been asked and answered dozens of times.) For a chain restaurant to inspire this kind of foaming expectation, they must be doing something right. Viewed objectively, it's a little hard to pinpoint what makes them successful. First of all, the Factory takes pride in their enormous, encyclopedic menu that encompasses more than 250 items at any given time. They make a big deal about the fact that their dishes are cooked (mostly) from scratch, but let's face it - it's impossible to have Thai lettuce
Read more