Arrowroot Pork Rib Soup

Another yummy soup often shows up and makes the girls happy during dinner:

Arrowroot Pork Rib Soup.

Ingredient: 
1 Arrowroot (about 450-500g)
200-300g pork rib
1200ml water (or slightly more for longer hours of boiling)

Seasoning:
Salt to taste before you serve.

Showing how you should peel the skin.

Method:

1. Wash and peel the skin of arrowroot. 
2 .Cut the arrowroot into chunks. 
3. Bring a pot of water to boil. Once it is boil, put the ingredients into the boiling water. Bring to a boil and simmer for at least 2 hours.

I don't usually have 2 hours consecutively for boiling the soup especially during weekdays. But having a Thermos Shuttle Chef helps me tons!

I usually chop off the tuber into two for easy peeling purpose. 

Note: 
According to my mother, this soup is a good source to expel dampness but not cooling. It is important to boil this soup for minimum 2 hours. My mum gave me one reason of dissolving its negative tonic of it but when I google to learn more, it is actually more of it needs longer time to bring out the starchiness of arrowroot. 

Arrowroot in the western world is well-known for its edible starch from the rhizomes (rootstock) of arrowroot plant. Here, we are talking about the tuber, commonly known as 粉葛 (fěn gé). Often, it is easy to be mistaken as yam bean, or commonly known as mangkuang 沙葛 (sha ge) at first glance. In my opinion, arrowroot looks tougher, usually more like a tree trunk than yam bean. 

Arrowroot has no flovour or smell, but

after boiled, it has a slightly nutty sweet taste. Apparently, young tubers have the best flavour, older ones are fibrous. Frankly, I don't know how to choose a young tuber. I always try to look for a small (=young?) tuber, as we are a small family and I don't really need to boil big pot of soup. What I learn from years of boiling this soup is that, this is rather idiot-proof recipe. I never get a bad pot of soup, only sweeter, or sweet.

However, I do learn that it is important to choose an arrowroot that is easy to peel off the skin, the smoother look of the tuber, the better to peel the skin.

You can read more on the health benefit of arrowroot here. According to Chinese diet, arrowroot benefits the spleen, stimulates the secretion of body fluid and strengthen immune system.

In such a hot weather these days, this is one of the best soup to serve!


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