Cooking the Imitation Version of "Shark Fin" Soup

On the last day of Chinese New Year, I had a craving for a particular soup and saw a simple recipe for it, which is the imitation version or the fake version of the "shark fin soup".

Shark fin is expensive and I too think it is too cruel to cut off the fins of the shark to have it for soup. Hence I do not subscribe to that.

I know many restaurants out there do a cheaper and simpler version of it without the real shark fins. There are also a couple of youtube videos teaching how to cook that so I went to learn it before cooking.

I realised so long we prep the ingredients earlier and bit by bit, it can be easily carried out. Thus, I told the family to let me try it out.

Ingredients:

Julienned carrots
Dried Shiitake mushrooms
Dried black fungus
glass noodle
egg
Black vinegar
oyster sauce
chicken stock
chicken breast
Dried scallop
Ginger
corn starch

Let's prep the ingredients first. Glass noodles and mushroom and scallops needed to be soaked. After some time, tear the scallop into strips, cut the mushrooms and remove their stems, cut the glass noodles to be shorter and cut the black fungus into strips too.

Don't forget to boil the chicken breast in boiling water with ginger for 20 to 30 minutes before tearing it off into strips.

After removing the scum from the boiling chicken breast and dished out the chicken, add in the water used to soak the mushrooms and also the scallops for extra flavour.

Then, let's add in the cut and prepared ingredients one by one: scallops, myshrooms, carrots, black fungus, glass noodle.

Stir it up for a while and let it boil. Next, let's season with some soy sauce and oyster sauce as well as chicken stock, salt and pepper to taste.

After it is boiled, it is time to add in a beaten egg like a egg drop. After that add in a bit of corn starch dissolved in water to thicken the soup. Swirl it slowly into the soup and stir after it right after.

Taste the soup to see if there is a need for a final round of seasoning. Then it is already ready to be served.

Serve with black vinegar if you like a tinge of sourish taste. I love it! The husband also said it was good. I'm glad I did it as usually Chinese restaurants serve this in their menu during wedding or occasions. The preparation can be done in stages though it may look like there are more steps in the preparation part. One more new dish unlocked, yay!