Perhaps, this is one of my favorite soups all year around.
While this egg drop soup is easy and quick to make, it is all about delicacy of each ingredient: sweet briny Dungeness crab, perfectly cooked “egg flowers”, earthly umami of mushrooms, caramelized onion richness from scallion oil, and the slightly thickened flavorful chicken stock.
As this is great side soup with other dishes, I love having this soup as main dish because I need a big bowl of it. Sometimes I even add mung bean thread noodle (glass noodle) to make noodle soup.
It is stock based soup, so the good chicken stock is important.
Homemade stock is always best thing. I simply pressure cook a cleaned chicken carcass (sometimes plus chicken neck) for an hour. I don’t usually put anything else besides chicken bones for stock. Because it is my everyday basic stock, so I just want pure chicken flavor.
Good point for doing this is you can freeze this stock and utilize for any kinds of cuisine by adding vegetables according to the dishes I make.
For some Chinese dishes, I add ginger and scallions, for French or Italian dishes, I add onion, carrot, celery, and herbs. When I make pho I can add charred onion. That way, I don’t crowd my freezer with bunches of different kinds of chicken stocks!
Egg Drop Crab Soup with Mushroom
Ingredients
- 1/2 tablespoon scallion oil, see note
- 3 ounces oyster mushroom, or your choice of mushroom, see note
- 1 1/2 cups homemade chicken stock
- 3 ounces Dungeness crabmeat
- 1 teaspoon soy sauce, see note
- Kosher salt
- Ground white pepper
- 1 tablespoon potato starch, mixed with 2 tablespoons of water, for slurry
- 1 whole egg, large, beaten
GARNISH
- Green onion, chopped
- Cilantro, chopped
- Scallion oil and fried scallion
Instructions
- Tear or slice mushrooms into bite sizes.
- Heat a pot over medium heat, and add scallion oil. Add mushroom and cook. Pour chicken stock and bring it to a boil. Add crabmeat and soy sauce; bring it to a simmer. Season to taste with salt and ground white pepper.
- Give a quick stir to the potato starch mixture since starch might set on the bottom. Slowly drizzle the potato starch mixture into a pot; stir gently and simmer until the soup thickens.
- While the soup is simmering, slowly drizzle the beaten egg. Simmer 10 seconds or until the eggs are set but not overcooked; give it gentle stir. Remove from the heat and serve with green onion, cilantro, and more scallion oil on top.
Notes
- Oyster mushroom, shimeji mushroom, maitake mushroom are good choices in this recipe.
- For scallion oil, gently simmer the thinly sliced green onion. Remove from the heat just before it turns into golden brown. Watch it carefully because It is easy to burn. Allow it to cool, and keep it in a refrigerator.
- Use gluten-free soy sauce if you prefer gluten-free diet.
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