Monday, September 13, 2010

Ginseng Chicken Soup


I don't remember when I started liking Korean food so much. I went to South Korea for a work trip before and I remembered having really delicious meals whilst I was there. But that trip wasn't what got me liking Korean food so much.

I think it was only when we were living in Beijing, that I started liking Korean food a lot. You see, Korean food is very good in Beijing - authentic, reasonably priced and easily available where we lived in the eastern part of Beijing city. And it is also different from Chinese cuisine - a lot more raw vegetables and not as oily. There was this restaurant that we used to go at least once every week for barbecued beef or kimchi soup.

After we came back to Singapore, I started experimenting with various korean dishes at home - like kimchi Jigae and dolsot bibimbap.

I had the inspiration to cook this soup after having it at Ju Shin Jung.

It is actually very simple to make. Simply stuff the chicken with a mixture of glutinous rice, barley and red dates and place the chicken in a pot of boiling water with some slices of Korean Ginseng. Let simmer until the chicken is so tender that it falls off its bone (about 3 - 4 hours)

When the soup is done, add some toasted pine nuts and sunflower seeds. Season with sea salt.

3 comments:

Blur Ting said...

ooo, I love this!

Petunia Lee said...

Hmmm... waht is meant by stuffed? Half cavity filled or whole cavity filled with uncooked glutinous rice and barley?

Open Kitchen Concept said...

Oh... What I do is just fill half the chicken cavity with uncooked glutinous rice, barley (about 4 parts rice to 1 part barley) and red dates. If you don't want to, just throw those in the soup, it'd not look as nice but the taste will be the same :)