everyone this is Kenji I'm at home I'm
about to make lunch and today we're
making some egg drop soup so I have this
broth that I made the other day very
simple sort of homestyle Chinese chicken
broth so it's just chicken bones that I
simmered with some scallion bottoms and
some ginger and that's about it and I
strained it I'm actually gonna yeah
that's enough if you don't have a
homemade Chinese chicken broth that's
fine you can just take any old chicken
stock store-bought is fine add like a
slice of ginger to it like this or a
couple slices and then if you have some
scallions I'm gonna use this kind of
tired one to flavor the flavor of the
broth take a couple scallions let's take
these greens too they don't look great
I'll save the crunchy bits of the
scallions for garnish and I'll use these
tops right now for the after the broth
so you basically just dump this in and
you bring it to a simmer and that's
gonna be your that's gonna be a broth
I'm gonna actually add a little bit more
in since there's gonna be three of us
eating this today so I'll show you
exactly how I do it if I was going to be
doing it with without that homemade
broth so I'm gonna basically just add a
little bit of extra bullion so this is
this is better than Boyan it's just yeah
it is better than the powdered stuff you
can get it's decent
little teaspoon of that and a little bit
of hot water
Oh people ask this what this tap is this
is a boiling water tap in my kitchen one
of my favorite features of this kitchen
came with it alright that looks like
about enough
so there you go and then you just let
the simmer for a little bit just infuse
that sort of ginger and scallion flavor
in there so you can do that with you
know boxed broth you can use it with a
regular western-style
do with western-style chicken broth you
can use better than blue on for this
recipe it doesn't really matter that
much especially because what we're doing
is we're gonna thicken it so normally
with a western-style broth start with a
good chicken broth it's kind of
naturally a little bit thick and rich
because of the gelatin that you get in
uh ooh where's the cornstarch
here's a question because of the gelatin
that you extract naturally from the
bones and connective tissue connective
tissues full of collagen which then
within the presence of moisture and heat
breaks down into gelatin and gelatin is
what makes your broth rich in sort of
mouth sticky mouth coating and nice but
in this recipe you thicken it quite a
bit with cornstarch so it doesn't really
matter if it has that much of its own
body to begin with I'm gonna go think
about about three teaspoons or so sorry
about about three tablespoons here I
don't know what the exact ratio I would
use is but somewhere about you know a
tablespoon for every two cups for every
pint of broth you have something like
that
it is gonna get nice and thick almost
you know you want it to be sort of like
verging on slimy and not actually slimy
in a lot of Asian cultures there's you
know they appreciate a sort of slimy
texture for life for lack of a better
term slimy texture whereas in most
Western cuisines that's not quite as
appreciated I'm sorry I shouldn't have
left that water on I know you're going
to get me in the comments for it hmm yes
wash your hands double times oh here's a
tip um especially right now during this
whole coronavirus thing if you're
washing your hands very frequently which
you should be doing wash them in cold
water you don't need warm water for
viruses the the important part is the
the soap well for lipid coated viruses
like the like this current virus the
soap is what breaks down that lipid
membrane and that works whether you have
warm water or cold water and using cold
water will help make sure that your skin
doesn't get chafed chapped if you're if
you're washing your hands frequently to
eggs yeah do a little little teeny pinch
of white pepper some white white pepper
in the soup as well and some salt
and I'm just gonna beat this up so this
is called egg flower soup in Chinese
because these shape that the eggs make
when you pour them into the broth look
like sweet osmanthus flowers that's I
think that's why it's called that
although as usual my normal disclaimer
on these videos I'm kind of talking out
my butt as I go along so um forgive me
if I get that incorrect we're gonna
garnish it just with some scallions I'll
show you a couple ways to slice
scallions by the way if you're if you're
not too particular about it you can do
this kind of you know this kind of
locomotive up-and-down thing like this
right but if you want to get really
really fine sort of scallion hairs very
very very thinly sliced scallions what
you want to do is something called a
back slice and that's where so you still
hold your fingers in the claw like this
right but when you cut your scallions
rather than pushing forward as you go
rather than doing this kind of motion
what you do is you slowly pull back
across them and you slice as you're
going back you see and the idea is that
you want to use as much horizontal
motion as possible and as little
up-and-down motion as possible and
that's gonna give you much sort of
cleaner slices that aren't gonna get
crushed what am i this is this is a good
tip for when you're slicing chives as
well very sharp knife and a back slice
like that one am I on my very first day
working at a number nine Park in Boston
and remember my when my first Jobs was
cutting chives for the whole line I'm
sorry you know like a couple quarts of
thinly sliced chives is what I was going
for and I was sitting there at the
cutting board and I was kind of going
like this you know I never really
experienced I didn't have a lot of nice
cool knife skill experience so I was
kind of going like this you see that
motion like that and you can actually
hear it right you do that crunch crunch
crunch crunch and that's the salt the
sound of
being destroyed being crushed and when
you do that which specially when you did
something like very delicate like chives
they end up kind of looking wet and of
course it also releases a lot more of
those juices and it produces a lot more
sort of like oniony
you know stinky off aromas which is not
really what you want and I remember I'd
been doing that for like half an hour
and I had a big pile of chives next to
me and the chef Barbara Lynch looks over
my shoulder and says what are you doing
I said I'm slicing chives and then she
picked up my cutting board dump them all
in the garbage and put it down and said
no you're not slicing chives here's how
you sliced chives and she showed me how
to do it it was a very I initially felt
a little bit like crying but but you
know you got a you get you get over that
stuff pretty fast when you're you're
working in the kitchen especially I can
old-school kitchen that's something
there were a little bit yeah a little
tough and a little macho hmm all right
so this is about to come to a simmer I'm
gonna whisk in that cornstarch mixture
with my whisk ooh something-something in
my kitchen is always taking risks all
right
so once
so cornstarch you have to bring it to a
simmer for it to fully thicken what you
want to kind of check on it as you go
I'm just kind of eyeballing it so I
might need a little more might need a
little less but we're looking for like a
nice thick thick mixture you'll know you
got the texture right because the
texture will be the texture of egg-drop
soup when you're done
that's looking good let me taste it for
seasoning peppers good these little salt
I'm gonna use a touch of msg as well you
don't have to use that mystery if you
don't want to all right so that's kind
of the thickness you're looking for not
not what as my daughter would call like
gloopy gloppy but definitely like kind
of thick that's also gonna help suspend
the eggs when you get them in there
mm-hmm
so this is like the simplest form of
Chinese broth by the way there are
multiple types of Chinese broth so you
can make so this is like a sort of
homestyle broth which is just chicken
flavored with scallion and ginger you
could also have like garlic onion in
there a more complex broth is a Chinese
superior stock which is what say like
wonton soup would be made out of and
that one typically is made with ham
Jinhua ham
so like a it's similar to sort of like
American style of country pork country
hams
so just salted pork and so you make it
with ham chicken and generally some kind
of dried seafood so that could be dried
scallops or dried flounder dried shrimp
and that's a superior stock this is just
a simple homestyle stock there's some
other stocks as well if you want to
learn about Chinese stocks I would
recommend going to the channel Chinese
cooking demystified one of my favorite
YouTube channels those guys generally
know what they're talking about all
right now comes the fun part the eggs so
well beaten egg what I do here you do
this with a fork you can do with
chopsticks I hold my chopsticks over the
edge of the bowl like this and I shake
it back and forth
oops a little bit too hard and I shake
it back and forth as ice as I drip them
into the soup no it falls down on them
like little threads a few stirs and so
basically the more you stir it the you
know that's more fine the curds are
gonna be and the more vigorously it's
simmering the more find the curds are be
going to be so there's no real right and
wrong way - you know right or wrong
amount to stir or agitate this it just
really depends on what you want that
final texture to be I like sort of
mid-sized ones with a few larger pieces
and a few little wispy small ones in
there and there you go that's that is
essentially it that is a drop soup let's
just garnish it up with some so in that
sliced scallion let's taste it again mmm
that's delicious
all right let me get into a let me get
it into a bowl so I can so I can go stay
stand by the door and eat it as is
custom these days and then I'm gonna
call my family out for lunch this is
probably the simplest soup known to man
oh hi there I'm on that cornstarch gives
it that nice sort of you know mouth
coating not quite slimy not quite lippy
gloppy but you know thickened Meuse
Musil a genus texture is what I'd call
it Musil a genus in a good way hmm
alright at least are you ready for lunch
well I promised the dogs we'll get some
leader this is way too hot for them
right now
[Music]
okay you can finish one more game
[Music]
Get a version of the printed recipe here: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/04/chinese-egg-drop-soup-recipe.html This is about as simple as soup gets. I had some simple home-style Chinese stock that I made by simmering a chicken carcass with some ginger and scallions (You can see a more complicated but still simple version of a few Chinese stocks on the always-excellent Chinese Cooking Demystified channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y248pBTcflw_). It wasn't quite enough so I bulked it up with Better than Bouillon. Then I thickened it and drizzled in some eggs. That's it. Yum. PLEASE READ! The coronavirus has hit many folks hard, including first responders and hospital workers, individuals and families who were already food insecure, and service industry employees who are, for the large part, currently out of a job. My goal is to help fix both these problems in the best way I know how to contribute: organizing people, and cooking food. If you would like to donate to our free meal fund, head to https://www.toasttab.com/wursthall/ where you can buy a boxed meal for someone in need. These boxes go directly to the frontline workers and food insecure families who have been hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. They also allow me to hire back my kitchen team to cook and pack these meals (in a safe, clean way). So far we have served nearly 500 meals, and the number goes up every week. If you would like to make a monthly recurring donation of any size, head to my Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/kenjilopezalt. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the free meal fund. You can also help by buying my books at bookshop.org/shop/kenjilopezalt where 100% of my sales commission goes to the free meal fund, and an additional 10% goes to independent book stores around the country. Finally, stay safe. Here is my guide to food safety and the coronavirus, written with the consultation of virologists, food safety experts, and infectious disease specialists, and kept up to date as new research emerges: https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavirus-a-comprehensive-guide.html#comment-anchor-452226