This ginger chicken soup recipe has only a hint of ginger. You can of course, up the quantity of ginger if you want more, and some say ginger is good for you. This is a great, quick, easy, healthy meal I think you’ll love. We served this up to 2 people as a main dish, but you could easily serve it to four as an entre.

Ingredients:

I used a non-flavoured oil as well as some sesame oil to give the dish some Asian flavours.
Fresh ginger root is always my top choice for recipes like this. In fact, if you want fresh punchy flavours, using fresh ginger is ideal when working with such few ingredients and a short cooking time.
This time (the dish in the image) I used a 1/2 (cayenne) red chilli, sliced fine to use as a garnish, although if you don’t want any heat, you could add a ¼ finely sliced red capsicum.
I prefer using chicken thigh fillets for dishes like this because they provide more flavor compared to breast meat and are more forgiving, making them less likely to be overcooked if you’re not sure of timing.
You need 1 litre of chicken stock. Choose one you like. I always keep Continental Stock Pots in my pantry for emergency flavour boosting.
Pak Choi or any Asian greens, for that matter, and they don’t take long to cook through, which helps make this a quick, easy meal.
Dried egg noodles. I used Mr Chen’s Thick Egg Noodles.

View of a Thermomix bowl with ginger chicken soup. — Thermomix bowl with our ginger chicken soup.

Which Asian green do we use for this soup?

Here’s a list of the Asian Greens I commonly buy and that are readily available in our Aussie and Asian supermarkets:

Purchase by the 18th December for Xmas delivery

Choy Sum
Pak Choy
Buk Choy
Chinese Spinach or Amaranth
Chinese broccoli
Chinese long beans
Kangkong or Chinese watercress
Wombok or Chinese cabbage
Chrysanthemum Greens
Snow Pea Leaves
Chinese Celery
Mustard Greens

How to adapt this chicken ginger soup to your taste:

You have options: Remember not to go over the recommended quantity for your TM bowl, though (which will depend on the model you have). Check this out for inspiration

Ginger: To add more ginger flavour, you could easily double the quantity. Chop the knob of ginger into four, drop it in the Thermomix and with the MC in place, use the same time and speed to chop it up. 5 seconds/speed 6

Sesame Oil: When it comes to cooking the ginger, you can leave the oil quantities the same unless you’d like to boost the sesame oil flavour too. Once again, you could easily double the sesame oil if you like that flavour. You can leave the Time/temperature/speed the same. 2 minutes/Varoma/reverse speed +1

Chilli or Capsicum: This is totally up to you. You could even leave the chilli out altogether. I like a touch of heat, and the red looks more appetising to me.

Chicken: When adding the chicken cubes, don’t make them too small they shrink, you know. You could easily add more chicken to this recipe if you need to feed more. If you go up to 500g of chicken, in step 5, change the time to 12 minutes/100°C/reverse speed +1, then check for doneness. Overcooked chicken goes a bit rubbery.

Chicken Stock: For me, the kind of chicken stock is critical. Choose something you like. There are many ways to make stock. Many Thermomix stocks use salt for their keeping qualities, so I don’t use them as much as I used to. I prefer less salt, so I have more control over the flavour of my dish. You can make your own chicken stock from scratch like this in a large pot on the stove or use something you like. But make sure it’s good. Bad stock = bad soup.

Want to feed more people, then add more green veg. The timing needs to be as above 12 minutes/100°C/reverse speed +1 because you want it to wilt slightly and have it hot to serve. You could always use your Varoma to steam off the soft green Asian Veg.

More Liquid Stock: If you need to feed more people, there are many options. One way is to change the recipe slightly so that I don’t overcook the chicken. I’d remove the chicken and ginger from the TM bowl after step 3, follow on with step 4, cook until the stock reaches 100°C, and add the chicken back to the Thermomix bowl and continue. The stock will take longer to heat up because of its mass and possibly where you’ve stored it if it’s cold or frozen.

Noodles are tricky. I’m not too fond of a lot of the fresh Asian noodles you can get at our Aussie Supermarkets. If you have an Asian Supermarket nearby, they’re really worth a look.

How I prepare the egg noodles for this dish.

Anyway, this is how I make the Mr Chens dried egg noodles. These noodles are readily available at Aussie supermarkets, and I like to start this before I start anything else. Pop the jug on, then place two or three nests of dried noodles into a Thermoserver or similar; when the jug has boiled, pour boiling water over the noodles and pop on the lid. By the time you get up to the step where you add them to the TM (as listed in the method), they’ve softened.