Radish, Kelp and Pork Ribs Soup

I bought this chinese recipe book, Invigorating Therapeutic Recipes , for a while but had never tried any of the recipes before. Since i have 90% of the ingredients at home, so i decided to give this recipe a try. The ingredients are pretty basic, besides the usual radish and pork ribs, this recipe call for kelp.

As i find kelp have this "fishy" smell, so i was quite concern that the soup will turn out weird. Nevertheless, i still give it a try. To my surprised, the soup turned out great, but partly due to i did not add too much of the kelp, as i was concerned that it might ruin the whole pot of soup. And despite that i had omitted the ginger, vinegar and wine, we didn't really taste the "fishiness" of the kelp.

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Radish, Kelp and Pork Ribs Soup (modified recipe)

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Ingredients

- one white radish, medium size

- one green radish, medium size

- one carrot

- 5g Dried kelp, soaked in cold water until it expand and soften

- 500g pork ribs

- 1.5 litre of water

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Method

1) Blanch pork ribs in boiling water, remove and drain.

2) Cut all radishs and carrot into about 1 inch rounds.

3) Put all ingredients into water and stew for 2hours.

4) Add pinch of salt for seasoning and serve.

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* I did not follow the recipe entirely, because recipe only call for white radish, but i have added green radish and carrot too. That was because my initial intention was to boil 3 carrots soup and i do not want to waste my ingredients, neither do i want to save them for other dish, so i just threw everything in. At the same time, recipe also indicated to add a few slices of ginger, some vinegar and millet wine into the soup, which i believe is to remove the "fishy" smell of kelp. As i do not have millet wine and my DH don't like vinegar, so i omitted these two. As i wanted a soup to remove "heatiness" so i omitted the ginger too. As chinese believes that ginger will help to keep the body warm.

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According to the recipe, this soup helps to replenish calcium and prevents osteoporosis.

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Medical values of Radish:

Regulates digestion, expels phlegm, heat and toxin. But take note that radish and ginseng cannot be consumed at the same time.

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Medical values of Kelp:

Also to expels phlegm and heat from the body.