Old Cucumber Soup

Feel like having a soupy day. One of my other half’s favorite. 

For soups I usually use village chicken, or “kampung chicken”. You must be wondering what I meant by that. Village chicken here means the chickens are free and roam all over in the village, not to worry, it will get home by itself. Their meat is much tougher as they have built stronger muscle tissue by running around all day and have less fats. If it is not cooked long enough, the meat will remain real tough to be eaten. Of course when it is in the village, chickens won’t be having any antibiotic or hormone japs for growth. Sounds healthy? That is the old story I know about the village chicken. Unfortunately, these days the modern large production for sales, I have no idea how the processes are.  

Seriously, talking about fats in the soup. I tried using normal chicken once, even after removing the fats on the surface of the chicken, after boiling, the whole pot is still floating with thick yellow fats.

I did not add any artificial seasoning. For me, I bought a whole big pack of dried scallop because it is my favorite. Not your favorite? you could replace it with dried oyster, dried mussel. It is now a Taste -  full soup.

Ingredients

1 old cucumber, 2 dried scallop

½ chicken

1 tablespoon wolfberries, 1 or ½ tablespoon salt

1 dash pepper to chicken

Prepare & cook

Wash clean chicken, remove yellow fats

Old cucumber, wash and scrape of the dirt on skin by using the back of your knife or spoon.

Remove seeds of the old cucumber, slice it about 1 cm each

Par boil chicken 5 minutes to remove impurities

Add all the ingredient

1 old cucumber, 2 dried scallops

½ chicken

1 tablespoon wolfberries

Add more water

Boil 20 minutes at medium heat

Tasting  time, 1 or ½ tablespoon salt

Low heat for another 1 hour or 45 minutes

1 dash pepper to chicken

When you remove the impurities of the soup at the beginning.

1.If you have no time, pour all the soup away together with the impurities.

2. If you have more time another 30 minutes, another old fashion method which is more tedious but makes the end outcome more tasty.

Use a strainer, keep the broth/soup, pour it to another pot or huge bowl. Why we keep the first round of broth because that is the sweetest part of the whole soup dish.

My next job is to rinse all the boiled chicken in water and clean off the impurities stuck in the pot before I really start to boil the soup. Well of course you could use 2 pots if you wish. But this is really a lot of work!

  

You could test it out. This time round, keep the broth, next time you could pour all away. Add new water to boil. See how the huge sweetness of the soup changes when you eat at dinner table.