Chinese Egg Drop Chicken Soup - Marion's Kitchen

Chinese egg drop soup, a restaurant classic. I've got a few tips and tricks up my sleeve to make this even better at home. The first thing we're going to do is make a super awesome broth. We're going to use store-bought stock, but I'm going to add a few extra bits and pieces to make it extra special. The first thing is we're going to add some fresh chicken to the mix. I've got some chicken thighs here. Feel free to use breast though if you would like. We're going to use the chicken meat later on in the soup. I'm going to add a little bit of salt to my chicken. Always be seasoning every step of the way. Then into a hot pan, I'm just going to add the smallest amount of oil. We're going to get a little bit of chicken fat. I just need the oil to just get everything started and sizzling in there. Okay, so chicken goes in. I want that skin side down. I'm just going to season the other side. Just let those guys sizzle away until we get some beautiful colour on the outside of that chicken. Because the colour, my friends, means that we've got flavour. Look at that amazing colour. Look at all that gorgeous chicken fat that we're getting as well. This is how we make a store-bought stock, truly magic. Plus, we get some chicken to add to our soup at the end, so it's win-win. Now I'm going to add my chicken stock. Now for some extra flavour. I'm going to grab some whole spring onions. I've also got some sliced spring onions. I'm going to use those at the end. These whole ones are going to flavour our broth. I want to put those down on my chopping board. Just give them a little bit of a bruise with my knife handle. This is going to help release more of the flavour quicker. All about getting things done quicker if I can in the kitchen. Then I want some ginger. Even just the smell of ginger just makes me feel like I'm getting a nice hug. Don't even bother peeling this one because I'm going to take it out anyway at the end. This is a little secret ingredient of mine, dried shrimp. You can get it from an Asian grocer. These guys will add an extra little bit of umami and savoury flavour to the broth. You won't be able to taste the shrimp, but you'll just get that extra boost of flavour. I'm going to add those in. Now you want to bring everything up to a simmer. Then pop a lid on. You just need to let that cook 20-25 minutes until your chicken is cooked through. The other thing we need to do is thicken our soup broth. In restaurants, you'll find the thickness of this soup varies from very very thick and gluggy to a very thin watery broth. I like something sort of in between. I'm using this amount of cornstarch, which gives me just the right amount of thickness that I like. Then I'm adding just the teensiest little pinch of turmeric. This is just going to give us a really lovely golden colour. I want some white pepper as well. Mix that with some water. This makes sure that we don't get any lumps when we add cornstarch into our soup. For the egg part of our egg drop soup, we just need a few eggs into a bowl. Just whisk those until they're well combined. This has been smelling amazing. Let's have a look at what we've got. That smell, the ginger, the spring onion. So beautiful. I'm going to take out my chicken. I'm going to save that for later. We can shred it up and add it to the soup. Now I'm going to take out my aromatics. The good thing about keeping them in quite large pieces, I don't need to strain the stock. I can just pull these out. Time to thicken everything up. I've got my cornstarch mixture. Pour that in. Just let this simmer away for a few minutes. It'll thicken up ever so slightly. I don't want it too gluggy. I just want enough body to hold the egg once we put it in. This is the kind of texture that we're after. While the soup is gently bubbling away, just drizzle in this egg so that we get some nice little fine shreds of egg through our soup. Just let it set for a couple of seconds and then start moving your spoon through the egg so that we don't get any big clumps. Our chicken from earlier, just pop that in. Here's where we're going to adjust our seasoning. This will all depend on how salty your chicken stock was that you started off with. Let's just see how we're going. Do you know what I love about that? I can just taste the ginger, just taste that beautiful savoury spring onion. So good. I am going to add a little bit more salt. Also add soy sauce if you like. I like to keep this a really nice bright yellow colour. So I'm just going to stick with the salt. Now one final little touch of special, just a little drizzle of sesame oil. Really takes the flavour up a notch. So all we have to do now is ladle this into bowls and then just a little sprinkling of spring onion on top. There you go guys, egg drop soup. Even better than your local restaurant, that's what I reckon anyway. So good.