Chinese Vegetable Noodle Soup

Posted:12/22/13

Updated:8/3/21

Lately I’m obsessed with Chinese Vegetable Noodle Soup. Every time I go to my favorite Chinese Restaurant (which is Kum Kau in Brooklyn) I always get the vegetable shrimp soup and stuff myself on noodles and broth. But I don’t want Takeout Chinese weekly, even if it’s only soup, I want to be able to make it myself. So I came up with this recipe and I couldn’t be happier with the results. If you’re a fan of Chinese Noodle dishes, you will love this soup!

This soup is very brothy so if love broth, you will be swimming in soup heaven. Also, this soup asks for a squirt of Sriracha sauce (chili-garlic sauce), you can add or subtract if you want more or less heat, but I definitely think if possible you should add a bit, it gives the soup a real nice kick but isn’t whelming in spice.

Because I always want to add vegetables to every meal, there’s a bunch of kale and carrots in this soup. I always love the way kale looks and tastes in a brothy soup. Along with the vegetables there’s garlic and the real star: ginger. I always think using ginger in dishes really gives it that true Chinese taste. If you cook a Chinese dish without ginger and with, it’s always the ginger dish that wins – always! But don’t worry if you don’t have fresh ginger or fresh garlic, because I have something that is going to help you in cooking year round. Do you know about frozen herb cubes? They are the best. I’ve bee using them for years and they have been saving me from the issue of making a dish and then realizing halfway I don’t have fresh cilantro, ginger, parsley etc on hand. I just open up the freezer, pop out a few cubes and I have fresh herbs. And don’t stop at soups, I love using the frozen cilantro for salsas in the winter time. And frozen dill cubes are perfect for adding in Sour Pickles!

The fine folks at Dorot sent me a few packages of their frozen garlic and herbs to try out and I have to say – Dorot is totally the brand to pick. As soon as I opened up the frozen cubes of ginger the smell hit me. The ginger smelled and tasted so fresh I was amazed that this came from a frozen package. As soon as I had garlic and ginger in the soup pot, Matthew even complimented across the room how great the soup smelled. A little more about Dorot, the company was established in 1992 and is fully owned by Kibbutz Dorot in the southern part of Israel. The kibbutz has more than 3,500 acres of field crops – garlic & herbs – which are picked, and then immediately chopped, packaged and frozen in a unique fast freeze process, maintaining their taste, freshness and nutritive value. And bonus, their products are all natural, non-GMO and gluten-free. Dorot can be bought in most grocery stores, while you can find them under Pop & Cook at most Walmarts. Each packaging will tell you the frozen equivalent measurement. For ginger, 1 cube is 1 teaspoon. For garlic, 1 cube is a clove. I’m in love with these frozen cubes.

So now that we have our easy to use fresh herbs, let’s get soup making! In this recipe you can use lo mein or chow mein noodles, but I prefer lo mein noodles myself. They don’t take very long to cook, 5 minutes max.

And in not much time, you’ll have a big pot of delicious Chinese Vegetable Noodle Soup ready for dinner.

And if you have any left over (it’s hard to do), it even tastes great heated up the next day. Enjoy!

Looking for more Chinese recipes? Check out my Chinese Chicken and Broccoli Recipe and Hot and Sour Soup.