The often forgotten Chinese takeout soup | Chicken Corn Egg Drop Soup! | The Woks of Life

Chicken corn soup. Once you get all the ingredients, it comes together right away. Couple of proteins. You got egg, you got chicken, thickens up nice. This is delicious. Chicken corn soup, people. Hi, everyone. Today, we're going to cook chicken corn egg drop soup. So this is usually one of the soups that are off to the side. You got the trio, famous trio, which is wonton, egg drop, and hot and sour soup. And then you got this other one that's lingering in the background, chicken corn egg drop soup, which is delicious because corn adds a little bit of freshness and sweetness to it. Plus, you have a little bit of, a few bits of chicken in there. The origins of this soup is, I think it comes from a little bit from Hong Kong because in Hong Kong, there's a lot of corn in soup, creamy corn soup, a lot of variations like that. But in any event, it ended up on the Chinese restaurant menu as chicken corn soup, and a lot of people like it. Okay, for the corn, you can use fresh corn like we're using today, or you can use frozen corn, or you can use canned corn even. And what we do is we set aside a bit of that and mince a part of the corn, and that'll integrate into the soup. It'll flavor the soup better while you still have a whole kernel of corn. This chicken corn egg drop soup is actually quick to make. What you're going to do is you're going to mince your chicken, marinate it, set that aside. Then you're going to measure out your stock, bring that to a boil. You're going to add your corn, along with the minced. You're going to add your seasonings. You're going to put your chicken in and break it up because it's raw chicken, and it's going to clump. You're going to break it up with a spoon, let that cook for a while, bring everything to a nice simmer. Then you're going to thicken your stock, drop your egg, and you're going to serve it after that. Now, that's a lot of talk, a lot of background, a lot of tips here and there. Let's get to the stove and make this thing. We're using fresh corn on the cob, obviously a lot easier if we're frozen, but hey, it's not that difficult. Using fresh corn. Just cut it off. Could be a little bit messy. Make sure you have a wide surface. I think you should do my trick where you break the corn cob in half and then cut it. Actually, I like that. Because the cobs, the corn kernels don't have as far to fall. I'm going to try your theory. Oh, you just break it with your hand. I realized that the other day. It's way easier. Oh, yeah? Yeah, you're right. Look at that. They're not scattering all over. Good one. One for Caitlin on the corn cutting, zero for Bill. Yeah, fresh corn is nice if you have it, if it's in season. We've got about a cup from these two little corn cobs over here, and now we're going to cut a half cup of the mince corn. Corn cobs for the chickens, they pick those apart nicely. All right, I'm going to cut this, mince this corn. Oh, and I can feel the juice coming out of it. And again, this will bring out the sweetness. It's kind of like you could actually just zap this in a food processor, but I'm too lazy to wash the food processor, so I'm just going to mince this. Nice thing about fresh corn is that it's very juicy as well, especially this bicolor corn that we're using. Nice and sweet, gives the soup a nice brightness. All right. All right, so we're going to have about four ounces of chicken here. You've got some chicken tenders. Yeah, there's some chicken tenders, and I actually froze them a little bit. So they're still somewhat semi-solid, and you can see how easily, more easily they cut. They're not squishing all over the place. So we have a whole series on this velvet, how to velvet your chicken, and that's exactly what we're going to do here for this soup. How big you like your chunks is totally a personal preference. You can mince it, or you can make it into bigger chunks if you like. So what we did was cut these into longer strips, and now I'm just going to make another pass the other way. This chicken is starting to defrost a little bit, so you can see that it's starting to squish around a bit and give me a little bit of a hard time, but not too bad. So you got little bits and pieces. That's about good. So that's the chicken. And what we're going to do, I'm going to wash my hands. So I'm going to velvet this chicken. I'm going to put about a teaspoon of oyster sauce. I'm going to add about a tablespoon of water to this. It's going to absorb this. About a tablespoon is good, but it doesn't really matter. Since it's soup, we could add more. And about a teaspoon of cornstarch. That's a big teaspoon. That's okay. It's going to be soup. Now, something about velveting chicken. You could add baking soda at this point, but that's another post. I don't like to add baking soda to chicken at all because I think it changes the texture of the chicken too much. Chicken's already tender. If we put this already, the seasonings, the oyster sauce, I like to use because it has a little sugar in it. It has a little bit of MSG in it. It has some salt in it. So you get all of it at once. Could you add wine? Yes, you could. But we're not going to add wine for this because usually we add the wine to the stir-fry. This is a soup. So you look at this. It's a bit of a glob. And all the standing water has been absorbed, but you can see it is a little bit wet. And we're going to let it sit to marinate for about 20 minutes. I'd be concerned if this was stir-fry. It's a little bit wet, but it's not. It's going to be a soup. This cornstarch is going to make it nice and velvety. And we're ready for the soup pot. So next thing, we're going to prepare our eggs. Just like any dish that we cook, like stir-fries especially, you want to get everything prepared. And that's what we're doing now. This egg is a full scramble. I don't want any kind of streaks that are yellow. So in this case, we want to mix it. Now in the original post, I said use egg whites only. And absolutely, you can use egg whites only and just lightly beat those actually. So egg is ready. Next, we've got our scallions that we've cut already. And this is going to go over the soup. We add these at the end. Next, what we're going to do is prepare our cornstarch slurry. So I've set aside half a cup of chicken stock here. And what we're going to do is add a quarter cup of cornstarch. What? A quarter cup? Yes, you need a quarter cup of cornstarch. It's a lot of soup. We're thickening. A quarter cup of cornstarch is roughly four tablespoons. That's one, two, three, four. So I'm going to stir that up. Okay, everything is absorbed in here. And this is also according to your preference. If you like a really thick soup, then make a little bit more slurry. If you want a thinner soup, like ours is going to be a little bit on the thinner side, a quarter cup to half cup of chicken stock is good. For this chicken corn egg drop soup, we use the default, which is cornstarch for thickening the soup. But you can use tapioca starch. You can use potato starch. Tapioca starch has a little bit more of a clear, silky texture to it. Potato starch also, totally up to you. Here at the Walks of Life, we use that for deep frying things in certain cases because it does turn out crispier. But cornstarch is the easiest to access, and it thickens just fine. But one thing about cornstarch, if you are reheating your soup, or if you've frozen it, which you can, and reheating it, you might look at it and say, hey, this is a little bit watery. What's going on here? The cornstarch will lose its thickening power when reheated a little bit, so it will be a little bit watery. That's fine if you don't mind it, but if you say, hey, I want it a little bit thicker, then just mix up a little bit of cornstarch slurry. After you reheat it, simmer it, and rethicken it. No big deal. All right, we're ready to go to the stove. All right, so we've got the stock on the stove. It's about five cups. I'm going to add this corn. Got minced corn first. I'm going to add the whole corn. We had it simmering, but you could have added this corn right at the beginning with heating the stock because this corn has to also cook. So we're going to let that cook a little bit. Stir. And at this point, I'm going to add the salt, sesame oil, and the white pepper. Half a teaspoon of salt, but I suggest that you taste this. I'm using homemade chicken stock, so I'm going to add the full amount of salt, a half teaspoon of salt. Good amount of white pepper, not too much. Good big pinch of that because you could also add black pepper. Black pepper goes really nice with this soup as well. Now I'm going to add about a half teaspoon of sesame oil. And this is totally up to you. Some people like to garnish the soup with the sesame oil. And then I'm going to add the turmeric powder as well. Again, this I call for, I think, a half a teaspoon, but, you know, you can add as much as you like. See how that turns a nice color? I'm going to add a little bit more, and it adds a subtle flavor. It's healthy. It is. It is very healthy. Look at that. That adds a really nice, rich color to it. We're going to bring everything up to a slow simmer. I'm going to turn up the heat now because we're about ready to add the chicken. Now, this finely chopped chicken is velveted. It's been sitting about half an hour. This would be a little bit wet if you were adding this to a stir fry. You might get some stickiness to it. But in this case, we're going to add it to the soup, so I'm not concerned. Just starting to boil here, and I'm going to add this right in. I'm going to scrape any bits we have. Going to let it sit for a few seconds, and then I'm going to start to stir it. You can see that you want to break it up a bit. This is where that velveting comes into play. It coats the chicken, and it has a really nice, slippery, silky mouthfeel. All right. I'm going to bring this back up to a boil. It's starting to simmer here. I'm going to take my cornstarch slurry, give it a good stir. Everything has settled onto the bottom. You can actually see. All right. Stir this nicely. I'm going to turn it down a little bit because I don't really want it to boil. And I'm just going to start stirring and adding. Drizzle this in so we don't get any clumps. Some people say, hey, I'm getting clumps. Well, if you're stirring like I'm doing, you shouldn't be getting any clumps. And you can see how it's thickening. Let's see. Not quite coating a spoon. Coating a spoon is a little bit thick. But I think I'm just going to add a little bit more here. And you can do what I'm doing is add a little bit more and see how you like it. If you like it thicker, add a bit more. If you think it's good, I think I'm just going to add all of this. And you can see it's getting nice and silky here. Okay. That's good. That's about the thickness we want. Remember, this is an egg drop soup, actually, a chicken corn egg drop soup. And you can actually make a soup with only the egg white, whether it's for health reasons or aesthetically as well because you get those nice white flowers that go into the soup. And here's where you're going to test your skills. As we drop it into the hot soup, the hot thickened soup, you're going to stir the soup with the spoon and get a constant stir. And dropping the egg in the soup is a little bit of an art. If you want little fine strands. I mean, my aunt used to say that, who worked with us in the restaurant, used to say, oh, this is a beautiful soup. And it had all little tiny pieces of strands that were all uniform. She thought that was beautiful. And my father used to say, hey, you have to try to make nice big wavy flowers in it. And that was beautiful. So to each his own. Egg dropping is the creative part of this soup. You can make it any way you like it. Just don't make it drop everything in a hunk, and then you get a big hunk of egg at the bottom. That's a no-no. All right. I've got my beaten eggs. Now here's the egg drop trick, okay. So you've got this ladle. You want a ladle like this. And you just put it right in here. And you start getting these, get this motion going. So you get a little whirl in here, and you drop the egg in the soup slowly. Oh, look at those nice big flakes. That's the way I like it anyways. If you want to stir, if you want smaller flakes, you stir faster. Want bigger flakes, you stir slower. So these are ribbons, big ribbons. I like the big ribbons. All right. I'm just going to add all. Now look at that, what you got. So very interesting. My father would be proud if he'd say, oh, those are nice ribbons. My aunt, on the other hand, would be saying, hey, those are too big. They should be smaller. So to each his own. But you notice I don't have any big chunks in it. Everything's a nice ribbon. So I'm going to let it come back up to a simmer first. Galleons here. We can add them now, or you can add them later. So I'm going to add some now. How's that? Add some now. And then we're going to add more later. Look at that. That looks great. I'm going to add a few more. All right. We are ready to serve. Turn it off the flame. Look at that. Beautiful. Oh, yeah. Beautiful. Make sure you get a little chicken, a little corn. That's one bowl. Make sure I get enough corn in here. Okay. Look at all that nice corn and chicken chunks. Oh, yeah. That's beautiful. There you go. So nice. And that is chicken corn soup. And I can't wait to dig in this because it's right in front of me, and it smells so good. Let's taste it. All right. You know, I forgot to taste this at the wok, but make sure you taste it before you finish the soup and serve it. But this, I did taste it afterwards. It looks good. Try it. It's very nice, right? Hey, I'm pretty proud of these ribbons. You did pretty good with these ribbons. Wow, that's delicious. This is quality soup. Whatever he said. What do you think? Is it good? Yeah. This is exceptional, though. It's pretty hearty, this soup. You know, a lot of people say about the turmeric, oh, I don't like the turmeric. It adds an off taste, whatever. I don't think so. I mean, I think it adds color. Clearly, the soup is really beautiful. And you really can't taste it. Turmeric is not, the powdered turmeric, you can't taste it really that much. Now, for those super tasters who don't usually eat spice, they could probably have a little bit of a taste. So, you know what? You just leave it out if you don't like it. But I think it adds a nice flavor. Easy to make. Delicious. Maybe add a little bit of rice in here to make it a meal. Make it at home. Don't sleep on this one. And if you like this video, like and subscribe to us, The Walks of Life. Maybe serve it with a piece of bread. Maybe serve it with a piece of rice. A piece of rice.