Old Cucumber Soup | 老黄瓜汤 | Lou Wong Kua Tong [Nyonya Cooking]

Hey guys, welcome to Nyonya Cooking! The place for Southeast Asian comfort food Now, when I talk about comfort food, I'm referring to food that makes you feel good, feel at home For me, it has to be Chinese soups Now, Chinese soups are really delicious because it is slow cooked Today, I'm going to show you how to cook old cucumber soup This is how to prepare it The first step before preparing the soup is to blanch the meat or the bones that you'll be using as the base of the soup In this recipe, I'm using pork bones You can replace it with chicken, if you like Over here, in a pot of boiling water, I'm going to add a few slices of ginger We will be adding the pork bones As you can see just now, the water was boiling vigorously Now, once we add the pork bones in there, it's going to settle down a little It's going to cool down We're going to let it boil for about a few more seconds Once it starts boiling again, that's when we're going to remove the pork bones As mentioned, you can substitute it with chicken meat or if you like, you can also use dried anchovies I've used that in my other soup recipes So, if you want to check that out, the link is in the description box or in nyonyacooking.com That's where we have a whole collection of recipes there So, this is already boiling We're going to remove the pork bones Discard the water What we're going to have right now is start with a fresh new pot of water So, over here, I'm going to let the water boil This is how old cucumber looks like So, please do not be mistaken It is not old rotten cucumber It's a different variation of cucumber It is also mostly found in Asia I brought this from Malaysia I couldn't find it in Germany If you can find it in Europe, please leave a comment in the comment section below Also, just tell me if you can find it in other places You just need to cut them into chunks and remove the centre of the old cucumber This is boiling right now We're going to add the pork bones again Dried scallops Dried oyster Dried scallops and dried oysters will make the soup slightly salty Therefore, we're going to balance it out with some sweetness So, we will also need some red dates Goji berries will also contribute to the sweetness According to Chinese traditional medicine, goji berries and also red dates are very nutritious to our body So therefore, having them in the soup will be very beneficial The last step is to add old cucumber We're going to let this cook at maximum heat Once it starts boiling again, reduce the heat to its very minimum We're going to let this soup simmer for at least one and a half hours You might think that it is long Believe it or not, a lot of Chinese households cook soups like this for at least 3 hours The result is amazing You get the flavours of each and every ingredient The sweetness of the red dates and also goji berries I absolutely love it To me, minimum, it should be 1 hour 30 minutes Nothing less If you want to go longer, it's really up to you Use a heavy pot like what I have here That would actually help you during the cooking process If you're going to boil it for so long, it's going to evaporate The soup is going to evaporate You're going to lose out a lot of water So, sometimes you might want to add a bit more water or add enough water so that it decreases well enough For now, we're just going to let it cook We'll be back with the final result Now, before we look at the soup, I just want to give a big shout out and thank you to Funan for sponsoring the location for our meet and greet in Singapore It was so nice to finally meet you guys To know who's behind the computer, who are actually behind the comments To know that there is actually support for Nyonya Cooking, it really makes us very happy Here are some photos that we took at Funan For those of you who haven't been there, Funan Street was the place where we had our location That's where they also have events sometimes So, check out their facebook page where you can also be updated for events once in a while This is how it looks like right now Everything looks so beautiful Because we had already blanched the pork bones earlier, so you do not really see much dirt on the layer of the soup Now, if you notice that there is a thick layer of oil which usually comes from the meat, you can remove it Over here, everything looks good So, I'm just going to get a spoonful as usual just to taste I did not add any salt because I do not really like using salt especially when it comes to soup Only when it's really needed but just because we had dried oyster and also dried scallops, so you would not really need salt in this This looks so beautiful I'm just going to taste... Perfection This is perfection Every time I taste a bowl of good soup, it makes me happy As I'd mentioned before, it feels like you're getting a big warm hug It really feels like that Delicious Just let me show you the cucumber It's really soft I really like eating this with a teeny bit of soy sauce Hmmm... It's so delicious It tastes a little like winter melon At the same time, you get this really smooth, creamy texture from the old cucumber that had been boiled for hours Always taste the soup first before adding some salt If you really want it, feel free to do so I hope that you'd have enjoyed this video and also this soup recipe If you're looking out for more soup recipes and also nutritious Chinese recipes, check out our videos where we have delicious and also healthy recipes Till then, I wish you, as always, happy cooking! you