Lotus Root and Dried Octopus Soup 章魚蓮藕湯

🧂 Ingredients

• 1 Dried whole octopus

  use 2 if they’re small (12” or smaller is considered small)
• 700 g Pork bones with meat

  or 400 g boneless pork
• 900 g Lotus root
• 400 g Carrots
• 100 g Mung beans
• 2 Honey dates
• 1 piece Dried mandarin peel
• 2.5 L Water

Instructions

• 1 Optional: rinse pork bones with water and put into a pot
• 2 Add water to the pot until the water covers the pork bones. On high heat, bring
  the pork bones to a boil. Turn off heat
• 3 Rinse off the bone fragments and impurities from the pork bones and put into a
  clean pot If you don’t want to rinse the meat, you can wipe them clean with a
  paper towel
• 4 Soak 2 honey dates and a piece of dried mandarin peel in water for around 5
  minutes. I used one piece of mandarin peel that’s approx. 1” x 1” If you like
  the taste of mandarin peel, you can add more
• 5 If your mandarin peel still has some of the membrane on it (white layer), scrape
  it off with a knife or spoon
• 6 Place the honey dates and mandarin peel into the pot with the pork bones
• 7 Peel carrots, cut into small pieces and put them in the pot
• 8 Peel lotus root and slice into small pieces and put them in the pot
• 9 Add 2.5L of water to the pot and bring to a boil
• 10 Rinse dried octopus and wipe clean with kitchen towels
• 11 Turn heat to medium in a wok or pan. Place octopus into wok. You can cut up the
  octopus if it’s too big to fit
• 12 Toast the octopus on both sides until aromatic and until it has obviously shrunk
  in size. This should take approx. 6-8 minutes
• 13 Add the octopus into the pot
• 14 When the soup comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and boil for a total of 2
  hours
• 15 Soak the mung beans for approx. 1 hour
• 16 After 1 hour, drain the mung beans and add to the soup since octopus is
  considered a warming ingredient, to ensure that the soup is not too heaty, mung
  beans are added to cut the heatiness. If you like the mung beans super soft,
  adding thickness to the soup, you can add it with the rest of the ingredients.
  Adding it after 1 hour will keep your broth clean and the mung beans whole at
  the time of serving
• 17 Boil for another hour on low heat
• 18 Serve. Note that I did not have to add any salt because the octopus had flavour
  and natural sea salt on it. But if it’s not enough, you can add salt to taste.

Nutrition Info