pork bone vegetable soup

the key to a robust bowl of soup lies in the bones. the deep rich flavors are hidden in the cartilage, tendon, and bone marrow. to extract all that goodness, one must cook the ingredients low and slow. making good soup is not hard, you just throw everything in a pot and walk away.

the soup we’re making is a cantonese favorite. for this recipe, we used pork leg bones, near the knee joint. you may use any sort of pork bones found at your local butcher, such as pork neck bones. using a pressure cooker (which is what we did) cuts down the cooking time by half. so having one around the house is a great investment.

pork bones 1.5-2 lb (0.7-1 kg)
medium potato 2
medium tomato 3
medium carrot 2
medium onion 1
celery 3 stalks
salt 1 tbsp
bay leaf 2 (optional)

• wash the bones and rough chop all the veggies
• in a stock pot, add water to fill almost halfway up the pot (around 2.5 liters for us)
• throw in the pork bones and bring to a boil
• once boiled, reduce heat to low-medium and boil for 1.5 hours
• turn heat to high and throw in all the veggies, salt, and bay leaves
• once boiled, reduce heat back to low-medium and boil for another hour
• salt to taste, if necessary

fresh veggies

warms your tummy on a cold night

commentaries

jun:

have you noticed that there’s a layer of scum floating on the water when boiling the bones. the trick to preventing that is to blanch the bones first in separate pot. this helps boil off the blood and protein that causes that layer of scum. blanch the bones in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then throw the bones in the stock pot. discard the blanching water.