Base White Fungus Soup

This is the base soup for white fungus. By adding in other veggies and fruits it'll modify the flavour and make it sweeter. Depending on the fruits/veggies you used, you can interchange figs with red dates and honey dates and pork bone vs chicken.
For the base soup, I specifically use pork neck bone because I found that pork back bone or chicken shell is not enough flavour. Since this is very basic with very little ingredients, the base is very important. Pork neck gives a lot of flavour and will help make your soup richer.
If you want to use chicken, you'll have to use several shells OR buy a mature chicken to use for the soup.

This is pretty much the bare minimum I would put into the white fungus soup. That's why I call this the Base White Fungus soup.

I'll post other variations of it later. :)

Base White Fungus Soup

Ingredients

• 1 White Fungus
• 5 - 7 Dried Fig
• 1/4 cup Apricot Seed mix (1:3 ratio for north 北杏 and south apricot 南杏 seeds)
• 1lbs of Pork Neck Bones
• 4L of water
• 1 tsp salt

Directions

1. Soak the white fungus for half an hour to an hour to soften and wash.
2. Rinse the apricot seed and the figs.
3. Cut all the figs horizontally in half so more flavour can escape into the soup when you cook it.
4. Pre-treat your pork bone by blanching it for 5 mins and washing the bones after the blanch.
5. Once the white fungus is soft enough to wash, gently wash any dirty that may be trapped.
6. Use a knife to dig out connections.
7. You can cut the white fungus into 4 pieces before you boil it or cook it whole and break it into pieces to eat when you're about to drink the soup.
8. Bring the water to a boil.
9. Add in the pork bones and bring the water back to a boil.
10. Throw in the apricot seed, figs and white fungus.
11. Once the water is back up to a boil, bring the heat to low or medium low (depending on your stove) so that it's at a soft boil. Let it cook for 1.5 hrs.
12. Add your salt, stir and you're done :)

Categories: Chinese Soup, Herbal