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Salted Vegetables and Duck Soup
First posted in Jan 2010, updated in Sep 2016.
Salted vegetables duck soup (咸菜鸭汤) is one of my favourite Chinese home-cooked soup. Its salty savoury taste makes the soup addictively appetizing (开胃).
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Salted vegetables may not be the most healthy vegetable in the world, but this soup makes a tasty home treat once in a while!
Just like Sichuan veg duck soup, I followed my mum’s tradition of using a slow cooker (crockpot) to cook this soup. Duck meat takes a longer time to cook than other meats like chicken, so the slow cooker is really useful for this recipe. With the slow cooker, one doesn’t have to spend hours watching the stove and topping up the water constantly.
To me, a delicious salted vegetables duck soup must not just be salty, it has to be mildly hot and peppery as well. In my version, the heat comes from the white peppercorn, red chilli and ginger (pictured above).
You know this soup is done when the duck meat is so tender that it just falls off the bones when it is gently touched with chopsticks. After simmering in the crock pot for hours, the soup is rich and delicious.
I don’t know why almost every recipe out there – including this one – uses GINGER for Itek Tim. You need GALANGAL. It’s a different taste, and a distinct taste. Without galangal, the so-called “Itek Tim” dish is not an actual Nyonya Itek Tim.
One really should also have either asam gelugor or tamarind in it. Some recipes call for one or the other, most do not. The sour plums are also needed and at least almost all recipes do include this.
Sigh. Oh well.
I never said this was the Nyonya Itek Tim. Just sharing my mum’s recipe, she has been making it this way for decades.
Auntie chiaros, I think you should read more slowly and more carefully and maybe try out the recipe for once instead of going round the web trying to be a “paper chef”. As in “paper general”, get it? Haha! Thanks you.
Hi NoobCook, a duck is too large. Can I use chicken instead? Will it taste funny? Thanks.
It’s half not the whole duck. Those familiar with this soup may not be used to the chicken + salted veg combi, but otherwise chicken can be used instead of duck.
This sounds like a fabulous alternative to the way I make Itek Tim on the stove. Gonna try it! Thanks!