Cooking: Hot and Sour Soup

[tuftears]

I needed a way to use up the other half of the chicken thighs I had left over from the previous week's Thai chicken curry. Tufty, I thought. What other kind of chicken soup can I make in a crockpot? Mexican? No, that'd just be chili. Then it hit me, the perfect soup when you have a cold or sore throat: hot'n'sour soup!



2 cups chicken stock
1 pound carrots, diced
Half a large head of bok choy, chopped into strips
Half a bag of chopped onions (about one onion's worth)
3 Tbsp black vinegar (or traditionally, rice vinegar)
2 Tbsp soy sauce
6-7 chicken thighs, skinless
1/4 tsp crushed red peppers

I set the crockpot to 6 hours slow-cook, then with 2 hours left, I added:

1 carton of firm tofu, chopped into small strips
2 tsp Hunan chili paste (any kind of chili paste should do)
1 scoop of ground flax seed

This last I used as a substitute for the corn starch that I saw in several hot'n'sour soup recipes. It adds a bit of healthy fat and thickens the soup. I think. It was an experiment!

I also scooped the thigh bones out with a pair of tongs, then stirred the soup well and let it finish cooking.

Above you'll see a bowl of the result. It tastes pretty respectable, definitely hot but not (to my taste buds) overpoweringly so. The chicken is shredded to threads; if you want your chicken to be firm, put it in later and then manually tear it to pieces.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I did throw some general-purpose poultry seasoning on the chicken thighs, to soak in while the meat got soft enough to shred.