Photographic Recipe!

So I've been meaning for a while to post a photographic recipe, just for the experience of doing so. And proving that cooking is easy. Unfortunately, I have found that it is very incredibly horribly profoundly difficult to remember to take a picture of every step of the process. Especially those that involve two hands already. But here are most of the photos explaining how to make egg drop soup :)

Cast of characters:
chicken broth
ginger
garlic
chives
eggs
cold water
cornstarch
dried seaweed

1. Bring three cups of healthy chicken broth to a boil.


OK, fine, I use chicken bouillon. It works. If you have the means to be fancy, use canned chicken broth, or make stock. Important: most store-bought chicken broth comes pre-flavored (gasp!) with carrots and celery and onions and stuff. This is bad, because the soup just won't taste Chinese with these flavors. So try to get broth that doesn't have too much non-chicken flavor in it from the outset. Vegetable broth should substitute fine, although it won't taste like chicken, and fish broth would probably be tasty too. But I only have neon yellow chicken-flavored sodium cubes.

2. While the broth (ahem) is coming to a boil, crack two eggs into an egg-cracking receptacle of your choosing, and beat them with a fork. (Tip: to make sure your eggs are fresh, place them in a bowl of water-- if they sink, they're edible!)



3. Then add a tablespoon or so of ground ginger (or fresh, if you're fancy) and a teaspoon or so of granulated garlic (again, if you have the fresh stuff, I'm jealous).



4. Now add a good tablespoon of dried (or fresh) chives. Pretty.


5. Here's the hard part. Fill a little bowl with about a half cup of COLD water. It MUST be cold. Cold tap water is fine. Just make sure it's cold cold cold. Add to this cold water two to three tablespoons of cornstarch. (It's white and powdery and gets all over you, unlike cornmeal... don't mix them up!) Mix the cornstarch and cold water together with a spoon or your fingers or something, until the cornstarch is dissolved.

[invisible photo... oooh, look at the pretty cornstarch!]

Then, right after the cornstarch mixture has been stirred (because it settles fast) dump half of it into the boiling broth. Stir it quickly! The soup will begin to thicken. If, after thirty seconds or so, the soup isn't as thick as you think you'll want it, add the rest of the cornstarch mixture. It'll look like this:


6. Hard part number two: stir the soup constantly in one direction (that's important-- keep it going in one direction, if you switch direction your egg drops won't be pretty) and slowly pour the beaten eggs into the broth. Once it's all poured in, immediately remove your spoon and take the soup off the stove. It's done! The eggs will take about twenty seconds to finish cooking, at which point the soup will look like this:


7. Add any garnishes you like, such as fresh chives or, as I like, a sprinkle of dried seaweed.


Or nothing. You don't need to get fancy.

8. Serve in a bowl. This recipe will serve one super hungry person or two less hungry people.