Fancy Chinese Vegetarian Stock (素上汤)
For when you want to impress a vegetarian.
This Cantonese vegetarian stock is actually pretty simple to make and really quite tasty.
To be completely honest, while I myself am not a vegetarian, I often find myself reaching for this one because it’s just so… straightforward. Where I live (Guangdong) it ends up being cheaper, too. It fits in pretty much any Chinese recipe – from Mapo Tofu to Cantonese sauces. And in my (admittedly limited) experience playing around with it in the context of Western cooking, it’s also quite versatile – made for a great quick pan sauce.
I will say that if you’re drinking this straight up as a soup, you’ll probably find it less exciting than something like Japanese dashi or similar Chinese daikon/kelp based broths. This soup excels when used as, well, stock – something that you can use can use in sauces, as the base for braises, and so forth.
Ingredients
Ok, so for the most part what we’re looking at is (roughly) equal parts dried soybean, shelled chestnut, and dried shiitake mushrooms by volume. So once you get the hang this, know that this doesn’t need to be an exact science… eyeballing is totally the way to go.
Dried Shiitake Mushrooms (冬菇), 25g -or- a half/half mix of dried shiitake mushrooms and dried straw mushrooms. So right, we used dried shiitake mushrooms here for ease of international replication BUT I did want to include a quick aside on straw mushrooms. For the most traditional Cantonese vegetarian stocks, they’ll use half straw mushrooms – mushrooms that grow on dried rice reeds. They were discovered by Buddhist monks in Shaoguan (northern Guangdong) and have this awesome fragrance. The dried version of the straw mushrooms can be annoying to source even here in Guangdong these days, so don’t pull your hair out trying to source them – but if you happen to have access to some great dried mushrooms that’re local to your area, totally feel free to use half those, half shiitake… it’d still be true to the essence of the dish here.
Shelled chestnut (栗子肉), 80g. Or about ~6-7 chestnuts (the weight there is for the shelled ones). Gives the soup some body.
Dried soybeans (黄豆), 100g. Soybeans help give the stock depth. There’s actually two different routes you can go here – dried soybeans, or fresh soybean sprouts. We went with the former (again, ease of international replication), but if you can get your hands on soyabean sprouts, feel free to swap those in instead (let’s double up there though… let’s say… 200g?). Dried soybean works great but they’ve definitely got some grassy notes that you gotta balance against (the sprouts have no such issues), Note that unlike mungbean sprouts, which’re the bog-standard “bean sprout” in the west, soybean sprouts have a natural umami to them… so definitely don’t use mungbean sprouts in a stock unless you wanna be disappointed.
Rock sugar (冰糖), 5g -or- ¼ tsp granulated sugar. We’ll finish this off with a touch of sugar to balance the grassiness of the soybean.
Optional: white peppercorns, ~20. This soup’s largely unseasoned – up to you if you want to toss in peppercorn or not. If you have it on hand, cool; if not, I wouldn’t stress.
Optional: dried red dates (红枣). This’s another ingredient that’s sometimes used to balance the soybean – I’ve seen some recipes call for like a whole handful. It makes the soup a bit on the sweet side though, and I’d rather stick with sugar for the sake of control when seasoning. But if you happen to already have dried red dates handy, there’s no harm in tossing one or two in, then doing the sugar to taste.
Oh, and four liters of water, too.
Process
First off, if you’re used to cooking western stocks, note that Chinese stocks instead (1) cook things at a heavier boil and (2) make use of reduction.
So high level overview here: reconstitute the soybeans and mushrooms in cool water overnight, toss everything in a pot with cool water, lightly boil everything until reduced by half, season and strain. Simple, yeah?
Reconstitute the dried mushrooms and dried soybeans with cool water for at least ~3 hours, or overnight. Separate bowls – we’ll be making use of the shiitake mushroom’s soaking liquid, but not the soybean’s. Be sure to leave a couple inches of water above the mushroom/beans in order to give them room to expand into.
Transfer everything except the sugar to a pot of ~4L of cool water. Strain the shiitake mushroom soaking liquid into the pot as well. Shiitake mushroom soaking liquid is awesome – super underrated ingredient. Hell, you can even use the soaking liquid straight up… IMO it’s better than stock – makes for a badass mushroom risotto. Note that if you happen to be using half some-other-sort-of-dried-mushroom, taste your soaking liquid before mindlessly tossing it in. E.g. those straw mushrooms I was talking about? Their soaking liquid’s a bit too strong and has some bitterness to it.
Get the pot up to a boil. As it starts to boil, you’ll notice there’ll be a slight bit of foam from the proteins of the soybeans. Skim it, don’t skim it, up to you. While not as cloudy as some, this stock won’t be overly clear anyhow… barring you going all consommé on it and using an egg white raft or some shit.
Swap your flame to medium/medium-low and let it bubble away until reduced by half, ~3 hours. The reduction’ll concentrate the flavors.
Season with sugar, then strain. Vegetarian stock, done.
Note on what to do with all those leftovers.
Ok, so that’s a good quantity of beans and such that’re leftover. Definitely don’t toss them – they’re good to eat. Perfect for a quick kinda ‘fuck it, everything in the pot’ braise.
Like, the other day when I was testing this I whipped up a bit of a quick stew using the leftovers that was way more delicious than it had any right to be. It was non-veg, and I didn’t exactly measure stuff (when cooking for myself it’s using eyeballing/going by ratio), but I figure that it wouldn’t hurt to leave a ‘vegetarian-ized’ version of the dish here if y’all want it. Note that unlike the above stock recipe, this isn’t authentic to… anything. But just to give ya an idea so that the stuff doesn’t go to waste.
Grab a couple of your leftover shiitake mushrooms and finely dice. Ditto with a couple cloves of garlic, ~1 inch or so ginger, and the white portion of let’s say ~4 scallion. Fry those in oil (I dunno… 6tbsp? Or butter if you're vegetarian) until lightly browned, then add in an equal amount of flour to make a simple roux. Fry for a minute or two until blonde, then add in your leftovers, Shaoxing wine (~1/4 cup), light soy sauce (~1/4 cup), dark soy sauce (~1 tbsp), slab sugar (~1-2 square inch chunk), a cinnamon stick, and enough water (and maybe a slug or two of the veg stock we just made) to submerge everything. Let it bubble for about 30 minutes or until thickened. If it’s not thick enough for you, hit it with a cornstarch slurry until it is. Season with MSG, optionally salt if its not salty enough, optionally sugar if its not sweet enough, optionally a touch of Chinkiang vinegar if its too sweet. Top with the green part of some scallion. Eat with some crusty bread. (I know that was a crap ‘recipe’, but… yeah. Just an idea for you.)