Homemade Seaweed Soup

Yesterday, I decided to try my hand at making seaweed soup.  I managed to buy a pack of  seaweed from the organic shop, and I discovered that with this pack I didn’t need to wash it at all before cooking.  It would be my first attempt at making this soup and I was excited to see how it would turn out.

These are most of the ingredients I used for the soup.  I like preparing it because it’s a no-brainer: just dump everything in and you’re good to go!

Closeup of the seaweed…it doesn’t look too appetizing when it’s not cooked in the soup eh?  Seaweed is supposedly high in protein 🙂

The beauty about this homemade soup is that you can customize it however you want.  You could add crabsticks, eggs, meat slices, ginger slices and still, it would taste good.

My hubby was feeling under the weather yesterday, so I decided to make him some mee suah, and poured this seaweed soup over it.  I used organic pumpkin seed brown rice mee suah, so the dish was delicious as well as nutritious! 🙂

Have you tried making seaweed soup at home, and what other ingredients have you used?  My kids LOVED the fish balls and meat balls, but they didn’t quite like the seaweed…it’s an acquired taste, I’d say. 🙂

Here’s my recipe for Homemade Seaweed Soup:

Ingredients

• Minced pork (marinaded with soy sauce and a dash of sesame seed oil; optional: pepper & corn flour)
• Fish balls
• Meat balls
• Sliced shiitake mushrooms
• Sliced carrots
• Sliced tofu (I used Japanese tofu, but you could also use the regular tofu, i.e. the kind we use for steaming)
• Dried seaweed, cut/shred into pieces.
• About 3 big soup bowls of water.
• Salt to taste
• Soup stock (I just used some vegetable soup stock, but you could also make your own chicken/prawn stock)
• Spring onions, chopped.

Method

1. Bring soup stock and water to boil in a large pot.
2. Lower the flame to medium.  Using a teaspoon, form minced pork balls with the marinaded pork and gently put each into the boiling soup.  Allow the minced pork balls to float to the surface, then lower the flame to simmer.
3. Put in all the other ingredients: fish balls, meat balls, mushrooms, carrots.  You can put in the tofu and seaweed last of all.
4. Cover the pot and simmer slowly for about 10 minutes.
5. Add salt to taste, dish out and serve hot!
6. If using egg, beat the egg and pour slowly into the soup immediately before serving.
7. If serving with noodles/meehoon/meesuah, then cook the noodles separately, drain it out and pour the seaweed soup over it.
8. Garnish with chopped spring onions.