Old Cucumber Pork Bones Soup
With cooling properties, old cucumber pork bone soup helps to lower body 'heatiness' and has anti-aging benefits!
Servings: 4 people
Cost: SGD $10
Equipment
- Pressure Cooker
- Soup Pot
- Stove
Ingredients
- 800 g old cucumber deseed, quartered and cut into 2 to 3cm pieces
- 500 g pork bones
- 2 - 3 tbsp Chinese almonds
- 10 red dates
- 25 g dried scallops or 1 dried cuttlefish
- 1.5 litres water for pressure cooker 2.5 litres for stovetop
- salt for seasoning
Instructions
- Gently scrub the skin of the old cucumber clean. Cut both ends and rub ends with cucumber in circular motion to remove bitterness. Cut it in half, length-wise and scrape out the seeds with a metal spoon. Cut old cucumber with skin intact (prevent the flesh from turning mushy after cooking) into 2 - 3 cm chunks and set aside.
- Blanch the pork ribs in boiling water for a 5 minutes to remove scum. Rinse the pork ribs and drain well, set aside.
- Rinse the dry ingredients and drain well, set aside.
- Place pork bones, old cucumber, Chinese almonds, red dates, dried scallops and water in soup pot. Cook for 30 mins with pressure cooker. 2 hours on stovetop.
- Season with salt to taste after boiling when it's still hot. Serve.
Video
Notes
- It is not necessary to remove the skin, it is needed to hold the flesh together. Otherwise the flesh will disintegrate easily into the soup.
- Some people may not like the strong almond fragrance, you can try soaking it in water before use to remove some of the fragrance.
- Do not soak the dried seafood, otherwise all sweetness and fragrance will be released into the water, leaving it tasteless.