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Vanessa Yung

Bernice Chan

During the winter season, double-boiled soups are a traditional Chinese way to keep the chills at bay. The soup and its ingredients are placed in either a tureen or ceramic jar, sealed and then put in a steamer and slow-cooked for three to four hours.
The end result is an intensely flavoured, usually clear broth that has absorbed all the nutrients from ingredients that are chosen for their benefits to the body.
Some are savoury, some are sweet, and some have a medicinal taste from the herbs used. Our team went around town to sample some of the best.

ONE HARBOUR ROAD
7/F-8/F Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, 1Harbour Road, Wan Chai, tel: 2584 7722
At fine-dining Cantonese restaurant One Harbour Road, executive chef Li Shu-tim makes several fresh soup stocks every day. Supreme chicken stock is crucial, particularly for his double-boiled soups.
The stock is combined with the ingredients and placed in a tureen. The traditional method was to seal it with a kind of parchment paper that was used to roll cigarettes, but this material is not available any more. Plastic wrap is now used and the tureen is placed in stainless steel steamers for four hours.
Double-boiled chicken soup with matsutake mushrooms (HK$188/bowl) has clean, complex flavours that we found very delicate. The savoury soup features thin, crunchy slices of the thick Japanese mushrooms that are said to be good for the eyes, while shi hu (the stem of an orchid) helps with digestion.
There's a more medicinal aftertaste in the double-boiled frog soup with fresh ginseng and American ginseng (HK$178/bowl), although the frog's legs and dried longan help counterbalance some of the bitterness.

JUI YAU
Shop D, 29-39 Shun Ning Road, Cheung Sha Wan, tel: 3480 9085
The restaurant may look nondescript but the soups are remarkable. Yiu Li-man, the 29-year-old chef-owner from coastal Taishan in southern Guangdong, came to Hong Kong to learn about Cantonese cooking. But when he opened his own place, he wanted to focus on Taishan cuisine and went back to his hometown for six months to learn more about it.
Yiu's soups can be long and laborious to prepare so it is better to order them in advance. The pork lung soup with dried vegetable (HK$128 for four), for instance, takes seven hours. First the lungs are scrupulously cleaned (for about an hour), then cooked for another hour in a dry wok. Then the other ingredients are added and the soup is double-boiled for a further five hours. It is said to be good for respiratory problems and is a popular soup during the flu season. Unlike the Cantonese version that is milky white with ground almonds, Yiu's soup is clear and light.
Yiu believes no one else makes yellow eel soup (HK$268 for four) the way he does. He puts the whole eel, including the internal organs and blood into the soup. The result is complex, flavourful and comforting and not at all oily. The eel meat is silky and still sweet, despite having been cooked for hours. This was our favourite soup of the day.

JIN CUISINE
2/F Holiday Inn Express, 3 Tong Tak Street, Tseung Kwan O, tel: 2623 2333
Head chef Tsui Nam-wah has more than 30 years' experience as a chef, specialising in Shanghainese and Hangzhou cuisines. He makes different soups every day. To ensure maximum flavour, he double boils the ingredients in small bowls for three hours.
Tsui says people like to eat lamb in the winter because of its warming qualities, so he came up with a lamb bone soup with wolfberries (HK$88/bowl). He stir-fries the lamb without oil, then adds wolfberry leaves and sweet wolfberries (goji berries) to tame some of the meat's gamey taste. The clear broth has a delicious lamb flavour and makes you feel warm and nourished.
An alternative is the double-boiled pigeon soup with pear and apple (HK$68/bowl) that has a delicate, sweet flavour and is good to soothe the throat. Tsui leaves the skin of the fruits for their nutritional value. He says it is important to carefully select and balance the amount of fruit, otherwise the soup will have a sour taste, as is quite common in other restaurants.

SER WONG FUN
30 Cochrane Street, Central, tel: 2543 1032
Director Gigi Ng Chui-po is the fourth generation family member of 125-year-old Ser Wong Fun. The company was started by her great grandfather and has remained mostly unchanged since then. The restaurant is best known for snake soup, but its double-boiled soups come a close second.
Ng explains that the soup base has not changed since her grandparents ran the business. She says that after Chung Yeung festival temperatures start to drop and people start drinking more soup. "We're busiest from mid-November until early April," she says.
And that is also when they use up twice as much skinned chicken meat (from older hens) and pork bones to create a richer tasting soup base, which also contains sugar cane, chen pei (dried mandarin peel) and ginger.
Here, the double-boiled stewed duck with fish maw and lily (HK$140/bowl) comes in a small ceramic pot, and has a richness from the duck meat. Another signature is the double-boiled conch soup with dried scallop and honeydew melon (HK$88) that has a sweetness from the ripe fruit.

SAM’S KITCHEN
Shop 6, Rockson Mansion, 27 Water Street, Sai Ying Pun, tel: 6300 2648
Chiu Wun-sam set up this small restaurant six years ago after he studied traditional Chinese medicine for 20 years but didn't get his licence. Not wanting to waste his knowledge, he decided to make soups with medicinal properties instead. While seeing a Chinese medicine practitioner and taking bitter Chinese medicine can be intimidating, Chiu likes to address health problems in a more tasty way.
After checking his customers' health Chiu will suggest certain soups for them to drink.
Sam's Kitchen offers eight or nine different soups (HK$25-HK$198) each day. Chiu says after drinking the soup, people will feel the effects within half an hour. Some take home two more portions to drink later.
Different meats complement the various effects of the Chinese herbs. People who are feeling cold, or have digestion issues should try double-boiled pork heart soup with black dates and dang shen (poor man's ginseng). It has a dry finish with some sweetness from the dates. Double-boiled fish head soup with headache-curing chuan xiong (Sichuan lovage root) and bai zhi (angelica root) does not taste as medicinal as it smells.
 


5 best places in Hong Kong to eat double-boiled soup, a winter warmer

Chicken and matsutake mushroom soup. Photos: Jonathan Wong

Ingredients for frog soup with ginseng at One Harbour Road.

Conch soup with dried scallop and honeydew melon (above) at Ser Wong Fun (below).

Yellow eel soup (above) and pork lung soup with dried vegetables (below) at Jui Yau.

Fish head soup with chuan xiaong and bai zhi (above) and ingredients (below) for pork heart soup with black dates and dang shen at Sam's Kitchen.

Pigeon, pear and apple soup (above) at Jin Cuisine (below).

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Double-boiled soups are popular in winter for their nutritional and warming qualities


Double-boiled soups are popular in winter for their nutritional and warming qualities.
