Chicken Manchow Soup

Chicken Manchow Soup (my style):

It's winter season now. Everywhere the temperature has dropped down, the weather too cold to bear and it's this season people intend to suffer from very bad to severe cold, flu, bad throat, sneezing etc etc. 

This season, the best remedy to fight off cold is having a hot piping chicken soup. The warmth of a hot soup relieves the offended throat. You can have different varieties of chicken soups. From the basic celery based soup or a lemon flavoured mushroom chicken soup to a tangy chicken manchow soup. 

Well, you may ask why only chicken? 

A study says that chicken soup can flend off the flu virus. A compund present in chicken soup called carnosine is said to strengthen the immune system to fight off congestion and inflammation. Chicken has anti-inflammatory properties. 

In my blog today am going to share with you a basic chicken manchow soup.

Let's go to a spicy tangy soup with loads of shredded chicken flavoured with crushed ginger garlic aroma, soya sauce and lastly with an egg drop texture. 

Here I have mentioned above as my style soup because here in this post am going to show you a basic chicken manchow soup which  I usually prepare only with shredded chicken and egg. Approx 2 leg pieces and 1 egg are enough to prepare a soup for around 5-6 people. 

A restaurant style chicken Manchow Soup includes addition of many vegetables like  capsicum, corns, cabbage, yellow and red peppers, coriander etc as well as some fried noodles. I usually prepare mix vegetable soup with addition of all these vegetables or a veg Manchow soup with all these vegetables go well. But a chicken manchow soup don't go well with all these vegetables but a few pieces of carrot are ok.

This soup goes well when you have a terrible cold and a bad throat. The tangy flavour of ginger, garlic and pepper along with soya sauce gives your throat the right relief when the hot piping soup drops down your bad throat. So always have this soup when you get a very bad cold. It's full of proteins too as it has shredded chicken and egg. And as mentioned above chicken has anti-inflammatory properties which relieves your cold and offended throat. The hot broth can also help up in opening your nasal passages allowing you to breathe properly. It's good for children too as it keeps them hydrated along with fighting off their cold.

So let's start. I am giving you the quantity for 5-6 bowls of soup. 

Ingredients and method:

5-6 medium size chicken pieces ( breast or leg)

Wash the chicken pieces and boil them in 2 bowls of water with 2 garlic crushed, few ginger streaks, few spring onion greens, 1 tsp pepper powder.

Once chicken pieces are cooked, remove them in a plate and transfer the water (which is the chicken stock) in another bowl and keep aside.

Let the chicken pieces cool down. Then shred the pieces, discard  the bones. If you want to see how the shredded chicken is done you can view my pics in my previous post of chicken sweet corn soup.

Heat a vessel. Add 2-3 tsp of oil. Add 2 tbsp of crushed garlic ( around 2 big fat garlic bulbs), 1 inch ginger crushed. Saute well. Add finely chopped 3-4 green chillies. Saute everything well. Add finely chopped 1 Onion and saute well.

Add few chopped carrots (1 tsp)- it's optional. 

Add shredded chicken pieces. Then add 2 tbsp of red chilli sauce and 2 tbsp of soya sauce. Saute for a minute. Then add the chicken stock which you kept aside earlier. Add more 4 cups of water. Let it boil vigorously. Add required salt and 2 tsp of sugar. Now add 2 tbsp of pepper powder. 

In a cup add 2 tbsp of corn flour. Add 2 tbsp of water. Stir and add in the soup mixture. Stir continuously. Your soup will turn thick.

Lastly break an egg into a bowl, whisk and add in circular motion the egg mixture over soup. Keep stir until the egg mixture turns into omlette type whitish in color and you are done. Off the flame.

Garnish with spring onion greens.

Serve hot. 

Note: This is a basic chicken manchow soup. If you need to prepare restaurant style then you need to add more vegetables of your choice and most importantly fried noodles while serving, as most of the Chinese restaurants serve. 

Fried noodles are easy to make. Just boil the plain noodles. Then apply salt and corn flour to it and deep fry them in oil. Put these fried noodles on top of the soup while serving. This time I didn't have mood to do this, but you can try and enjoy your chicken manchow soup with some delicious crispy fried noodles!! 

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