Besides stir fries, Bok choy is also wonderful for soup. Learn to make this weeknight pork and Boy choy broth with just 5 ingredients.

Time: 2/5
I’d be lying if I said it “only takes 15 minutes!”. But I’d also be lying if I said it took longer than 30 from start to finish.

Effort: 2/5
Requires the incredible effort of throwing stuff into a pot.

Home is where the soup is

Growing up in a Chinese household, soup is a love language in itself. There’s something warm and restorative in a bowl of flavourful broth that goes beyond the simple biological nourishment it provides – it took me almost 30 years and moving out to finally appreciate how much effort goes into making soup.

From the cooking blogs and videos I come across, I get the impression that Bok choy enjoys a greater presence in the Western world than most of the other Asian vegetables I cook with. For the uninitiated, Bok choy is a vegetable in the Brassica family along with broccoli, brussel sprouts and kale. I call it Baak choi in Cantonese (or baak choi jai – 白菜仔, literally white-vegetable-kid).

You probably know it in the form of a stir fry (for which Made With Lau has a most excellent recipe), but it also makes a good broth along with a bit of protein to give the soup some depth of flavour. Pork is probably the most common, but it’s also great with fresh clams if you can get your hands on them. In fact, a simple pork and Bok choy soup with a bowl of rice is an easy, well rounded weekend dinner on its own.

There’s a broad division of soup in Cantonese cuisine: quick-boiled soups (滾湯, gwen tong / gwen tang; 滾 as in a rolling boil, and 湯 for soup/broth), and slow-simmered soups (老火湯, low for tong / lao huo tang; 老火 literally being old-fire).

Slow-simmered soups are the ultimate expression of a full-time mom’s care. It usually features bone-in cuts of meat or chicken, simmered on the stove for two or three hours to make a thick and hearty liquid with deep and nuanced flavour. Besides umami and meatiness, you might also get sweetness from ingredients like carrots and jujube.

I am, unfortunately, a time-poor salaryman rather than a full time mom. Which is why I go for quick-boiled soups whenever I want home to feel a bit more like, well, home. These are usually based around small pieces of lean protein and quick-cooking leafy greens. The heat is left on medium-high, and after 10 or 15 minutes you get a clear, clean-tasting savoury broth.

As with all soups, you have to make a call on whether you want more flavour in the ingredients, or more flavour in the soup. You could boil the Bok choy for about 5 minutes and keep them green and crisp, or go closer to 15 to turn them almost mushy. I like them very soft, but you do you.

Now that you have some soup, go make some more Chinese home-cooking classics like Tomato and Egg Stir Fry, or this Garlicky Grouper with Glass Noodles!

Dramatis Personae

Serves two.

Bok Choy – 300g

Wash them very well, especially around the bottoms of the leaves where they connect to each other. A lot of dirt likes to hide in those crevices.

Pork – 100g

Pick a cheap, lean cut like rump. The meat is mostly here for flavour, but if you cut it across the grain into thin enough pieces and boil them briefly enough, they can stay tender enough to be eaten too.

Soy sauce – 1 teaspoon

An optional marinade to give some flavour to the pork. If you’ve already decided not to even try and eat some of the pork (but why not? Waste not want not) you can skip this.

Ginger – a few slices

Just a bit of ginger gives a lot of flavour and depth to a broth, especially when it’s as simple as this. You don’t even need to peel them, just give the slices a quick rinse to get rid of the dirt on the skin.

Salt – to taste

Salt at the end when making broths, and you’ll probably end up using less salt in total to achieve the same taste. If you salt beforehand, you lose some of the salt as it moves into the other ingredients. You also lose water from evaporation, which makes the soup proportionally more salty. Salting to taste at the end just leaves less to chance.

Executive summary

1. Cut pork into thin slices, and marinade with soy sauce.
2. Bring a pot of water to boil. Throw in a few slices of ginger. While waiting, wash bok choy.
3. When the water reaches a boil, throw bok choy into the pot.
4. After 10-15 minutes, throw in the pork and bring the heat down to a simmer.
5. Stir the pork into the broth and simmer for 1-2 minutes.
6. Serve piping hot.

Play by Play

Last things first. Cut the pork as thinly as you can, and marinade by mixing in a bit of soy sauce. You can do this overnight, but a quick 10 minute marinade while you prep the other ingredients is fine. Notice how I’m cutting perpendicular to the meat fingers – you want the knife to do the work, not your teeth.

Wash the bok choy, keeping in mind that the dirt likes to hide in folds like these.

Check out all the dirt from less than an lb of vegetables! Aren’t I glad this isn’t going down into my stomach.

Bring water to a boil with pieces of ginger. You won’t overlook the ginger, so you might as well get it in early and let it infuse. You may see spots of oil on the surface, because I also used a bit of broth from a previous soup. You don’t have to, soup is usually made with just water. Make sure you save space for all the vegetables you chuck in once the water reaches a boil

It always seems like there isn’t enough space in the pot until the vegetables shrink down. Add the pork when the vegetables are almost done. Give the soup a stir to make sure everything gets distributed well. I’d turn down the heat into a simmer at this point.

Once the pork is no longer pink, the soup is ready to serve. Remember, we cut the pork very thin and there’s plenty of heat in the water. This way, we keep the pork tender and enjoyable to eat.

A simple, home style dinner: Bok choy soup, beef with carrot and cucumber stir fry, and a big saucy plate of tomato and egg stir fry. The Bok choy is very soft and tender, just the way I like it.

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