Coconut Pork Sweetcorn Soup

Pork and sweet corn soup. Because why not? Why not? It doesn't always have to be chicken people, you know. I absolutely love pork. It's beautiful meat. It's so, so lean. Full of flavour. And protein. Of course. Oh my goodness, everybody's looking to, I don't know, water and all these sorts of things. Got protein added. This is protein. And I'm using like pork shoulder. It doesn't just have to be for roast. You can buy boneless pork shoulder, you know, cube it up. And it's great as a slow cook. And this doesn't take long. When you cut it this small, the soup will take about 45 minutes. Yeah. You know, you think pork shoulder, you think six hours, eight hours, low and slow on the barbecue, you know. Now, this is a really quick and easy soup, but full of flavour. Because soup doesn't need to be boring. Onion for me, please, Jo. I'll do your garlic. Diced? Yes, please. And this soup, I'm not blitzing at the end. So nice, small dices. You're going to see all of the beautiful meat. Because I am usually a blending soup kind of guy, you know. Especially in a restaurant, I like to refine it, make it look a little bit prettier. At home, nah. I was going to say, I like it both ways. It depends on the soup. It does depend on the soup. Sometimes blended. Sometimes I like it chunky. Yeah. Rustic. For me, anything with meat in it, usually I leave it chunky, you know. Yeah, you want those bits of meat. You don't want to be blending up your pork or your chicken or whatever, you know. So just keep an eye on stirring this. You can see that's already caramelising off nicely. You're getting those beautiful golden nuggets on there. And as that cooks down, it's going to render the fat that is in there and really help thrill up the flavour. All right, Jo, as soon as you finish with the onion. Ginger, please. Just finely chopped again? Finely chopped. I'm going to chop up some chilli. I've given almost a Southeast Asian spin on what is quite a classic Western dish of a chicken and sweetcorn, you know. Because you know me by now, guys. I like a little bit of spice, you know. I was going to say though, these have to be like our favourite spices. We're all using the old garlic, chilli goodness. I mean, we're so... It's like Asia's answer to a mirepoix. Yeah. French cooking, everything carrot, onion, celery, leek. Southeast Asian, onion, garlic, ginger. Yep. All right, nice little bit of chilli there. You can see this meat's nicely browned off now. I'm just going to crank up the heat a little bit and I'm going to move it over. You can take the meat out of the pan, guys. Traditionally, if I was in my kitchens, I'd be like, yep, take the meat out, put it to the side. I'm making it easy for you, OK? One pot, all in, a little bit of olive oil over there. And now we're going to go in with our onion, ginger and garlic and just sweat that off. Can I throw this in? Yeah, you can throw in the ginger. Thank you. Beautifully chopped, Jo. Well, you know, I'm on my best behaviour cooking with you. Good, I like it. Pop in the garlic as well. The chilli we'll add a little bit later. Just give that a nice mix. And then as it's cooking down, just bring it all together. Let that become one. You don't want colour on the onions. You just want them translucent. I'm loving the idea of this, you know, nice chunky soup with whole bits of meat in there. Beautiful. Party soup, you know? Like I said, it should be a hug in the bowl. That's what I want when I want a soup. I hate dainty soups, you know? I want a proper soup. I want something to get my spoon in. It should still be a meal. I've just gone in there with some cumin and ground coriander. I'm just going to cook that out for a minute, just to let those spices activate. I once, when I was a young, young chef, many, many moons ago, I did a trial at a restaurant and I didn't get the job. Spoiler alert. Because when I was doing it, they always used to make you cook and I did a dish and I was so panicked. I was still really young, learning, and I was so stressed, I forgot to bloom my spices for the dish I did. And the dish was amazing. But the chef was like, no, I could taste it. I could taste it. It was bitter. Like it was this. And since that day, every time I've had a spice in my hand, I'm like, cook it out, cook it out. Like that one thing. So it does make a difference. Yeah. Not to you, mate. It didn't that day. I know it didn't. But, you know, it's a lesson that stayed with me my whole career. All right. Now we're going to go in with the chilli. You can adjust the heat on this, guys. Up to you how hot you want it. You know, I like it spicy. So I'm putting in a whole chilli. But I did take the seeds out, the seeds and the pith, just to cool it down a touch. Now I'm going in with some soy and fish sauce. Nice. And now is this just canned corn? You've got all the frozen corn? You can use fresh. You can use frozen. You can use tinned. With something like this, it does not matter. OK. All right. Nice, generous amount of corn in there. And now the stock feast, Jo. This is where the soup part comes in. But cooking that all off in those stages, you're building the flavour. You're layering the flavour. It's not going to be one dimensional. You're going to have a lot going on in here. And it will take all of this stock. One litre you want in there. Is that chicken stock you're using? Yeah, chicken stock. So I'm just going to let that come to the boil now. Reduce it to a simmer. It's going to cook out for about 45 minutes. And then we're going to finish it off. You can smell it. That porky goodness in the air. Look at that. Delicious. I love corn. Oh, I love corn. Yeah. I love corn. I love pork. Jo, if you can cut the spring onion for me, please. And the lime in half. If you do me two cheeks of the lime. I'm just going to add some coconut milk to this now. Just to give it that real velvety, silky, beautiful hug that you want from a soup, you know? All right. One lime. I'm just going to use to season this up. Nice hit of lime juice. A little bit of pepper. A little bit of salt. Not too much because remember we've got that soy in here and the fish sauce as well. Comes back to the boil so quickly. And you can see it's got a gorgeous consistency there. You can see cooking the meat and the stock really brings that kind of... Gelatinous. Yeah. I can't wait for you to taste this, Jo, honestly. So, so good. And like that simple. We're going to put the fresh herbs on top. Just laden in that pure bowl of goodness. Guilt-free, flavour-packed, delicious soup. Always guilt-free. Never feel guilty about what you eat. Just to always savour every bite and enjoy it. Look at that. A little bit of picked coriander, please, chef. Some spring onions. A touch of coriander. That's beautiful. Happy? Yeah. Some bread on the side because you've got to have a beautiful sourdough bread with your soup and proper good butter as well. I mean, a little bit of salt. Look at that. That's comfort. The hug in the bowl, I promise, Jo. It is. Well, I'm having some. Let's have a taste. Oh, delicious. But you see how, like, you can see it looks thick and creamy and really velvety. Oh, that is just divine. That meat is starting to really fall apart. Like, I hardly even had to chew that. It's so creamy. It's kind of reminding me of a chowder. Yeah, it's just, it's so much flavour. It's such a little, you know, party in your mouth. It's just, oh, it's joy. It's joy in a bowl.