Ingredients: pork, radish, carrot, ginger, dried mushrooms · 45 min cook time · 315kcal · ~₩10,000
Instructions
1. Today my dad's gonna show us one of the most important and traditional techniques in Cantonese cooking. How to make a very simple Lo Foh Tong or literally old fire soup. All right, friends. We're making a Pork and Radish Soup. Let's review parboiling together. For soup, you don't need this big slab of meat. Let's chop it up into smaller pieces. Not into tiny pieces, though, for soup. These medium-sized chunks. We have 14 oz of pork. If you want to use more, that's fine. Now, we're going to parboil the pork. Start in cold water. You must put the pork in cold water. Turn to the highest heat. Use enough water to cover the meat completely. Once it comes to a boil, turn to medium heat. Boil all of the scum and debris out. We want all the blood and scum to come out. If you don't parboil the meat, your broth won't look clean. Once it boils, turn the heat down. After it boils, turn down the heat and keep parboiling for 4-5 minutes. Don't parboil it for too long. It's crucial to avoid overcooking the pork at this stage, as it can lead to a decline in flavor and texture. Our pork is parboiled. Now, transfer it to cold water. We'll shock the pork in cold water. We want to rinse off the debris that's stuck to the pork. Otherwise, this scum will cling to the pork. Rinse the pork in cold water to clean the surface. Transfer it to the cold water. Pour out the water from parboiling. This pork is ready for making soup now. We'll give the pork a quick rinse by the sink, then move on to preparing the rest of the ingredients.
2. Let's peel the radish. This radish is almost 2 lbs. Radish is really healthy during cold weather. Now that the radish is peeled, we'll do the same for the carrots. Cut and discard those ends. While we peel the carrot, water is boiling over there. Starting the water now helps save me some time. Later, I can bring it over here and cook right away. How much carrot is that? This is about 4 oz of carrot. Notice how my dad throws the peels into the bowl next to the cutting board. Having a dedicated "garbage bowl" is a great way to keep your kitchen cleaner while you cook. For soup, we don't want to chop the carrot up too small. Use a rolling, or oblique cut for angular pieces. Remember oblique cut? Roll the carrot as you cut it, see? Every piece is approximately the same size. We'll work on cutting the radish next. This radish is very thick, so I'm splitting it in half first. Then, keep cutting it. Cut it like this, thick slices. This recipe is definitely going into our upcoming Cantonese cookbook coming out in early 2027. Until then, you can read early drafts at newsletter.madewithlau.com. Or, you can also use the oblique cut. You can also use the rolling, oblique cut. Lots of people prefer these oblique pieces in soup. All chopped up. Smash a piece of ginger. This will help extract the flavor into the soup. Put that in. The mushrooms are very soft, see? It was about 2 oz dried, now it might be a whole lb.
3. All right! Let's turn on the heat and make our soup. Highest heat. We've got about 8 cups of water here. This water is already almost boiling, so add the mushrooms. Pork. Add the radish and ginger, everything. Get everything in there. All right, cover and bring to a boil. Here's an important note about making soup: only add salt when your soup is finished. You won't know the volume of the soup until it's done, so any initial seasoning won't be accurate. You may have this much water now, so if you add salt accordingly, then there's less water as it cooks, but the amount of salt stays the same, then it's too salty. So always season with salt last, after the soup is done. That's the most important thing to remember! We're bringing it to a boil over high heat right now. Boils very quickly. There's a bit of foam from the carrots and radish. So we'll lower the heat and scoop the foam out. Scoop it out. Now our soup will be beautiful! If you want to know why other people's soups are beautiful and clear, they do these little things. Cover all the details and tasks. Scoop out the foam and scum. Broth scum is denatured congealed protein. It's harmless and flavorless, but visually unappealing, hence why we're discarding it. All right, cover and cook on medium heat. It'll take about 30 minutes to get the radish tender. Then it'll be ready to eat. If you cook it for too long, the radish can get overly soft. You're not covering it completely? We're leaving the lid ajar because it's about to overflow. Leaving the lid crooked will keep the soup from overflowing. Lower the heat and cook about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes of cooking on medium-low heat, the soup is now ready to be seasoned and served. All right, friends, our Pork and Radish Soup is ready! Now, we're going to season with 2 tsp of salt. Look at how clear this broth is. Drop-dead gorgeous! Friends, our Pork and Radish Soup is complete! I hope you all enjoy it! Thank you!