Tasty Asian-Inspired Rice and Cabbage Soup

There's nothing quite like
hot soup on a cold day!

Just in time for the falling of the first snows of this winter comes a new soup recipe! This soup is hearty and delicious melding the sour and umami flavors characteristic of Asian soups. I came up with this gem trying to use up a package of shredded cabbage mix before it started to turn. It is a simple recipe that could easily be made vegan if one so desired. The best thing about this soup is that making it...making a LOT of it...is super cheap. If you are anything like me, you probably have most of the ingredients in your house right now. Unfortunately, I didn't get any great photos of the process since I sort of made it up on the fly, but trust me, you'll love it! After all, it's cheap, quick, easy, healthy, hearty, and delicious, what's not to love?

Ingredients: white rice, shredded coleslaw mix or shredded cabbage if you don't want carrots in your soup, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, ginger, black pepper, water, and beef bullion.

Methods: I began with a partial package of shredded coleslaw mix...it had both red and green cabbage along with carrots. I placed this into a large pot and drizzled on some olive oil to get it started cooking. Next, I added in soy sauce and a good amount of rice wine vinegar as well as some spices (garlic powder, onion powder, a little ginger, and black pepper). I let the veggies simmer stirring occasionally. We had some leftover boiled white rice that I used later, but if you don't already have cooked rice, now would be a good time to start.

The best bullion award goes to...

Once the cabbage became limp, I played around with the proportions of the seasonings, soy sauce, and vinegar a bit to make sure I liked the smell and taste of my soup base. I then dropped in two cubes of beef bullion (Knorr is my favorite brand...the blocks are a bit larger, tend to dissolve faster, and have a better flavor than other brands.) and added water to almost completely fill the pot. I let this cook for about 15-20 minutes stirring ever so often and adjusting the flavor until it had the right balance. The cabbage pieces were cooked well, but still retained a bit of a crunch, which made me especially happy. The last thing I did was break several eggs into a mug and scramble them with a fork. Then I slowly poured the egg into the boiling soup as I stirred the liquid constantly. This produced thin strips of cooked egg as the soup continued to cook. From time to time, I would switch directions as I stirred to further break up the egg bits as they cooked. I continued cooking for several minutes until the eggs were properly cooked in the hot liquid.

To serve, I filled a bowl halfway with rice and then poured the soup on top, taking care to get more than just the liquid from the pot. (I didn't even bother employ my immersion blender at all for this one, which might just destroy Airicca's perception of how I make soups.) The husband rated this one highly and we ended up pouring all of the soup over all of the rice to store in the refrigerator. This pseudorecipe makes a lot of soup, so there have been plenty of leftovers! (It reheats really well and the rice soaks in the flavors over time!)

Future Modifications: I plan on remaking this soup again and again, especially when money is particularly tight. If you are a vegan, you could easily forgo using the eggs, but they sure are tasty if your diet allows for them! If you have beef broth readily available, you could easily replace the bullion cubes. If I had the ingredients, I would have added mushrooms and possibly red bell peppers to this. You could also use onions and garlic as opposed to the powdered seasonings. You might even have green onions lying around, which would make additions! It would have also been nice to have more shredded carrots as I LOVE carrots, especially in soups. Alas, we work with what we have and we are glad when our experiments yield success!

If you are looking for something different and you love Asian soups, I would definitely give this bad boy a try! Happy eating! :)

This isn't the soup that I made, but it looks similar save for the green onions.
This could be a glimpse of what your soup will like! :p