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After days of great and happy feasting over the CNY, I guess it’s really good to eat meals with food that goes lighter on your palate!
I remember when I was younger, my nanny who is a Cantonese, loves to boil soup for the family. I super love her watercress soup – the childhood taste that I still recall fondly now. So I grew up loving soups during dinner, and I try to make it a point to boil soup for my family if I have time.
This easy Chinese ABC soup is one of my go-to favourites, since it contains many vegetables, boiled into a nutritious soup base. My kids love the taste of this soup too!
若想阅读中文版本，请在网页的右边 “Google Translate” 点击选择 中文简体 (Chinese Simplified）或 繁体 (Chinese Traditional) 翻译。可能食谱读起来会怪怪的，所以如果有疑问都可以问哦！
There are lots of reasons explaining why this is called the ABC soup. One of the funniest explanation is that because it contains a-nion, b-otato and carrot (pronounced in the Singlish slang), lol!
Most commonly, we would use potato, carrots and onions for this soup. I’d like to leave the starchy potato out, and replace with tomato and corn instead. Sometimes I’d also like to throw in a few stems of celery. This soup is so versatile that you can mix-and-match your favourite vegetables!
>> MORE CHINESE SOUP RECIPES:
And if you do not have pork ribs, you could use chicken drumstick. Or, if you want a lighter soup base, replace the meat bones entirely with ikan bilis!
This is a nutritious all-time kids favourite! Simmer vegetables in this simple to make Chinese soup for your kids.
- 500 grams pork ribs
- 1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped or whole
- 1 large carrot, peeled and cut to chunks
- 1 corn, cut
- 4 stalks of celery, cut
- 2 medium tomato, cut to wedges
- 2 tbsp ikan bilis, rinsed, optional
- 3 red dates
- 1 small slice of ginger, optional
- 1.2 litres water
- Salt to taste, optional
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Bring a small saucepan of water to boil. Blanch pork ribs for about 5 minutes. Rinse with tap water, drained and set aside.
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Add blanched pork ribs and all other ingredients except tomato and salt into a large soup pot. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down to low. Add in tomato, simmer for about 60-90 minutes. You can season the soup with salt.
I would recommend leaving out salt if you are serving the soup to kids 🙂
If you prefer super tender pork ribs after cooking, simmer for about 2 hours instead. Or, use a thermal inner pot to boil and simmer the soup for about 45 mins, before transferring to thermal pot to keep warm for 2-3 hours.
This nutritious vegetable soup goes well when paired with rice and other dishes; or serve with some blanched noodles or bee hoon with sesame oil for a quick meal 🙂
The recipe looks healthy for kids! My kids’ fave soup too.