Comforting Creamy Century Egg with Silken Tofu Soup

Century Egg, Tofu and green bean Creamy Soup with Green Onion Pancake

If you love century egg porridge as much as I do, you will love this soup. It is very easy to make with a can of creamy Campbells chicken soup.

Century Egg (Chinese: 皮蛋; pinyin: pídàn)

Add chicken stock and water to make the soup consistency of your creamy soup base. I use more water and stock as I like it more liquid.If you like it thicker, follow the Campbell's instructions. But a thicker soup is harder to stir tofu, century egg and vegetables, so cook them separately and then mix everything up only for a minute or so.

I also recommend replacing half the water quantity with chicken stock to give that really slow cook taste. For a more watery soupy consistency, you can heat on low after mixing the condensed soup and water-stock mixture to form a creamy soup.   Then add cubed silken tofu and cubed century egg. Use any diced vegetables you have, I pick cooked green beans only because I have some left overs. The idea is to pick a fragrant vegetables, you can use kale, spinach, carrots, peas etc. But cook the vegetables first. This way, it will only take about 5 minutes to cook the soup.

Key note : be very careful as you stir the soup, very low heat, and push gently outwards away from your body with a flat spatchala. Do not push inwards towards the body, only out and lift up and out again...very gently. This way, your tofu will not break up and look like throw-up. Also, use a wok or a wide pot, it helps the tofu float better and less contact with everything else. This is an exquisite soup, the century egg really adds a depth of taste.

If you are a first timer with century eggs, you can try this soup, it takes away all the funky taste of the century egg, Century eggs are like aged cheese, it is an acquired taste. It is also alkaline and combined with any stock high in calcium or any other nutritional value, helps the body absorb the nutrition. This soup can also be made from scratch with a roux but it will take more time.

Other fabulous Century Egg dishes include :

sliced century eggs served as an hors d'oeuvre with slices of pickled ginger root adjacent jelly fish is a popular starter

A must try - Congee with century eggs : out of this world good

sliced eggs with silken tofu and pork floss drizzled with thick soy sauce