I often shared that I can save my gas by heating or steaming other dishes above my pot of boiling soup.
I will never do that when I am boiling Lotus Root Soup. The flavour of the soup will be imparted on the other dishes being heated or cooked above it. I will also not use chicken or boil pork ribs in it so that it will bcome tenderise enough to cook other dishes.
There are two ways that Lotus Root soup can be made. At home I use the basic soup ingredients to make it. But during Chinese New Year when you have to boil enough to serve every member of the family who are home for the reunion dinner, you can add the optional ingredients to make it more flavourful. That was how my mother-in-law boiled the soup.
The arrowroot and chicken feet will thicken your soup and you can omit them if you want to. If you like your peanuts to be soft, soak them in hot water for 2 to 3 hours before boiling them in the soup. You can also soak them in cold water and leave it overnight in the fridge.
Chinese soups are cooked by boiling the water with the ingredients. Once the water is boiling, you can turn down the fire to let it simmer. Most soups will take at least 1 hour to cook but if you have root vegetables or ingredients that are denser, you will have to cook it for about 2½ hours. Check the condition of your peanuts. If it is not soft enough, you can continue boiling. You can add water if the level has dropped too much and you need to boil a little longer.
Since I buy my groceries online, I am usually not able to get the exact amount of lotus root I need to make the soup. I am not worried if the lotus root I received is too large as it will enhance the flavour of the soup. If I do not have enough lotus root to make the soup, I can either reduce the amount of water I usually use, which is about 1½ to 2 soup bowls, or make adjustments to the other ingredients.
These are the ingredients that will enhance the flavour of the soup, which I can increase the quantity required or reduce it, based on the size of my lotus root:
The basic
-soup bones
-arrowroot (it thickens your soup and can be omitted)
You can include all or pick any one of these optional ingredients to add to your lotus soup.
-dried oyster
-dried squid
-peanuts
-chicken feet (it thickens your soup and can be omitted)
It is not a good idea to increase the amount of dried oyster and dried cuttlefish as they will make the soup taste fishy. It will be best not to include peanuts if you are boiling soup with less water as they take a longer time to boil to soften.
The ingredients that will sweeten the soup are:
-dates
-dried honey dates
You can reduce the amount used if you are someone who do not like drinking sweet tasting soup. I will omit the dried honey dates but not the dates. The number of dates I use depends on the size of the dates I have on hand. If they are large, 4 pieces will do and if they are smaller, I will add accordingly, up to a maximum of 7 pieces.
If you have made a mistake by adding too much water to your soup and it tasted bland, instead of boiling it down, you can save it by adding a few pieces of sengkuang.
This is the way I will cut my lotus root if I plan on removing them to cook another dish with.
These are the sauce ingredients I often use to flavour ingredients such as meat or lotus root that I have removed from the soup:
-garlic oil
-a few tablespoons of water or lotus root soup
-sugar or honey
-soya sauce and/or oyster sauce
-black or white pepper
I pan fry them till the liquid thickens and sticks to the lotus root. If you like to eat your lotus root crunchy, you can blanch the sliced quantity you want in the soup for about 45 seconds. You can find ways to add flavour to the lotus root from your soup by doing a search online for "lotus root dishes".
You can cut the lotus root in large chunks if you have no intention to eat them.
If you do a search online for "lotus root soup, you will find many other variations for making it. Here is one from The Woks of Life, which is totally different as their ingredients include seaweed/kelp, ginger, dried goji berries and scallion. Check out links to their glosarries if you are wondering what some of the ingredients in Chinese recipes look like.
I have posted many other useful tips about making soups on this blog. I have collated some of the information in the following question I answered on Quora:
Do you like soup? If so, what is your favorite soup?
