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30 (Fri) August 2019

Deluxe Egg Drop Soup

3.0

by me

at home

-Dasmariñas Village, Makati, Manila, Philippines-

with the Family

Egg Drop Soup is a Chinese dish.  At its most basic, it consists simply of chicken broth with egg swirls, seasoned with salt, white pepper, perhaps a drop of soy sauce, perhaps garnished with sliced scallion.  In Korean-Chinese restaurants, rice dishes are often served with a complimentary bowl of egg drop soup on the side (though it is never sold separately).  One of the cornerstones of American-Chinese cuisine, corn starch is added to make the broth thick and goopy.

My rendition here is the thinner traditional style, plus enoki (deluxe).

Back in the 90s, certain Chinese restaurants in the States had signs in their windows claiming “NO MSG.”  (Not the dive joints, which won their customers on price, not the high-end establishments, which won their customers on taste, just those mid-tier places that were neither very cheap nor very good and thus needed a marketing gimmick to gain an edge.) Now that I think about it, the claim couldn’t be entirely true, given all the core Chinese ingredients that inherently contain MSG, like chicken powder, oyster sauce, soy sauce, etc.  They probably meant “NO ADDED MSG.”

(See all GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)