Bazhen Tang (Blue Soup Soup)
Serves: 8 | Prep time: 1 hour 15 minutes | Cook time: 30 minutes or 5 hours
Based on the traditional Chinese ‘Eight treasure decoction’ soup (Bazhen Tang 八珍汤), this soup is great for warming up the body in winter, improving blood circulation and women’s health, in particular post-period health.
This recipe is ideal for beginners or those who don’t want to purchase all the individual herbs. Why? Because you can use a pre-packaged Chinese herbal pack!
The additional Chinese herbs, which are optional, are added to help make the soup sweeter (which is my preference). In saying that, I’ve made this recipe plenty of times without the extra herbs and still loved the soup!
Why Blue Soup Soup? This is the name I called the soup when I was a child.
Why “blue”? I think I was slightly colour blind as a child and thought that blue was brown and brown was blue (that or I just confused the words…).
Why “soup soup”? Simple - I used to repeat words… for everything!
INGREDIENTS
1 Whole chicken (raw) or 1-2kg chicken drumsticks (raw)
5-6 Dried beancurd sticks
3 Ginger slices
Pre-packaged Chinese herbal pack (120g) (see Tips & FAQ below for specific herbal pack)
1-2 tbsp Mushroom flavoured dark soy sauce*
⅓ cup Light soy sauce*
2-3L Water (however much you want really but the more you add, the more diluted the herbal taste)
Salt to taste
Oil
Extra herbal products (optional)
2-3 Dried red dates^
1-2 Dried honey dates^
15 Dried longan^
¼ cup (or a hand full) Goji berries (on top of those in the herbal pack)
* The amount of soy sauce added is to taste. These measurements are what I use but you can add more or less depending on how salty you want the soup to be.
^ The level of sweetness is to taste. Add more dried dates and dried longan if you want the soup to be sweeter. If you want it less sweet, add less dried dates and dried longan.
See my Tips & FAQ section below for more information
COOKING TOOLS YOU MAY NEED
Muslin cloth and cotton string
Thermal cooker
METHOD
Step 1
Separate the herbs from the Chinese herbal pack and the extra Chinese herbs into:
Herbs A: Rehmannia rhizome, dang shen root, rhizome chuanxiong, Chinese angelica, dried paeonia lactiflora root, dried atractylodes macrocephala rhizome, dried smilax glabra root, licorice root, dried ginger, cinnamon bark, citrus peel
Herbs B: Dried black dates, dried red dates, dried honey dates, dried longan and goji berries
Chinese herbal pack with extra (optional) herbs
Products to take out from the Chinese herbal pack to go into ‘Herbs B’
‘Herbs A’
‘Herbs B’
‘Herbs A’ note: These have been labeled after matching ingredient names from the Chinese herbal pack to Google images and may not be 100% accurate (I tried my best…). But rest assured, these ingredients all came from the Chinese herbal pack! For full accuracy, I recommend you visit your local Chinese herbalist.
Step 2
Wrap ‘Herbs A’ in muslin cloth and secure with cotton string.
Step 3
Place ‘Herbs A’ and ‘Herbs B’ into a medium-sized stock pot and fill with 2-3L of room temperature water. Soak for 15-30 minutes.
Step 4
While the herbs are soaking, snap the dried beancurd sticks into roughly 10cm long pieces. Pan fry with oil on medium heat for 1-2 minutes or until brown. Turn the sticks and repeat. Be careful not to burn them.
Step 5
Cut chicken into small chunks.
Step 6
After soaking the herbs, add the fresh ginger slices to the stock pot and bring to boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. At this point in time, you can either remove ‘Herbs A’ from the stock pot or leave it in. I prefer to leave it in to help develop the herbal taste in the soup.
Step 7
Add dried bean curd sticks, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce and salt to taste. Bring to boil again.
Step 8
Immediately after the soup has boiled again:
If using a thermal cooker: Add chicken and immediately remove the stock pot from the heat and transfer it into a thermal cooker and leave for a minimum of 5 hours.
If not using a thermal cooker: Add chicken. Reduce heat to low and simmer with the stock pot lid on for 30 minutes.
Step 9
Serve by itself or with noodles.
TIPS & FAQ
Where can I buy these ingredients?
The dried beancurd sticks, Chinese herbal pack, additional loose Chinese herbs and soy sauces can all be purchased at any well-stocked Asian grocers. I bought all of my Asian ingredients from Yuens.
The rest of the products can be bought at the supermarket. The soy sauces can be bought at the supermarket as well but Asian grocers tend to sell them cheaper.
Here are photos of these Asian products below (sorry I forgot to take a picture of the goji berries!).
Chinese herbal pack
Dried honey dates
Dried red dates
Chinese herbal pack ingredients list
Dried longan
Dried bean curd sticks
Are the herbs edible?
All the loose herbs are edible and while the harder wrapped herbs in the muslin cloth are technically edible, they’re mostly roots and are hard to eat.
Do I need to wrap my herbs in muslin cloth?
The muslin cloth just helps to contain the herbs and improves the presentation of the dish. If you don’t have muslin cloth, don’t stress! If you don’t have muslin cloth, skip Step 2.
You can buy muslin cloth at most speciality kitchen shops or stores selling kitchenware. I bought my muslin cloth from Biome in Australia.
Do I need a thermal cooker?
Using a thermal cooker improves the tenderness of the chicken 100%. By adding the chicken to the soup just before transferring the pot to the thermal cooker, the chicken won’t overcook. Instead, it will slowly cook from the heat that is being retained by the thermal cooker.
If cooking in a thermal cooker, I highly suggest preparing this soup for dinner the morning you want to drink it. This means completing steps 1-7 in the morning, leaving the chicken in the soup to cook slowly throughout the day, and having it ready for dinner the moment you get home from work!
My thermal cooker is from Thermal King and it was purchased on eBay here.
Ingredients ‘to taste’ - what does this mean?
These measurements aren’t exact and are ‘to taste’. When you start cooking this soup more often, you will start to figure out what ‘to taste’ means for you.
Sweetness: Adding the additional dates will help make the soup sweeter and cover up the natural bitterness from some of the herbs.
Saltiness: Like all dishes, the amount of soy sauce (dark and light) and salt is to taste.
What is this soup good for? What do these herbs do?
This soup is great for warming up the body in winter, improving blood circulation and womens’ health, in particular post-period health.