Vegetarian Stock
Ingredients: dried soybeans, shelled chestnuts, dried shiitake mushroom, cool water, rock sugar · 180 min cook time · 100kcal · ₩10,000
Ingredients
100g dried soybeans, 80g shelled chestnuts, 25g dried shiitake mushroom, 4L cool water, 5g rock sugar
Instructions
1. Add some cool water to both your soybeans and your dried shiitake mushrooms, making sure to leave an inch or two above them to give them room to expand into. Then just leave those to soak for at least a couple hours, or alternatively, overnight.
2. Drop all your ingredients in a pot together with about 4 liters of cool water. Be sure to include that shiitake mushroom soaking liquid though, it's like concentrated umami juice and you can bet it's going into the pot. Now cover, and get that all up to a boil.
3. Then swap your flame to about medium-medium low and let that bubble away. Chinese stocks tend to be cooked at a slightly heavier boil than Western stocks, and also make use of reduction. So we'll be looking for it all to be reduced by about a half, which should take about 3 hours.
4. After that time, season the soup with a touch of rock sugar. This was about 5 grams worth. This is just to balance the grassiness of the soybean. And if you can't find rock sugar, just swap that out for about a quarter teaspoon of granulated sugar. Then once it's dissolved, just strain everything out.
Source: Watch the original video