Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

The fine bristles on the skin of the hairy gourd pricks! Really! But once you peel off the skin and cook it in soup, it’s completely harmless and delicious.

Most of the time, I use pork and dried shrimp as the base for my soups. Same for this easy hairy gourd soup recipe.

Ingredients (serves 2):

- 1 lb lean pork*, cut into big chucks
- 1 tsp dried shrimp
- 1 small pc ginger
- 1 hairy gourd
- salt
- white pepper

Method:

1. Blanch pork in hot water to remove skum.

2. Transfer pork, dried shrimp and ginger to a small pot of water. Bring to a boil then simmer for at least 2 hours.

3. Half and hour before serving, transfer the hairy gourd to the pot. Hairy gourd soup is ready to serve when its color changes from opaque to a bit translucent.

4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Substitute ingredient:

*You can use pork ribs instead of lean pork, like what tigerfish did. See her cooking method in tigerfish’s food blog. I used lean pork as it was cheaper and I was using the pork for flavoring the soup only, and throwing it out later.