After mastering classic British soups, many food enthusiasts crave for more adventurous flavours. Luckily, renowned celebrity chef and restaurateur Rick Stein has shared a recipe for a tantalising crab and sweetcorn soup from his cookbook ‘Food Stories’.
Speaking about the dish that holds personal significance, Rick revealed: “It’s the first dish I ever ate at a Chinese restaurant – in Peterborough, in 1964 as it happens – it’s also a world classic but is so often ruined by tasteless crab and gloopy cornflour.”
He added: “I thought it would be interesting to restore the dish to its simplicity and reliance on good fresh ingredients.”
This inviting soup leans heavily on fresh elements, yet its warming broth comprises mostly pantry staples. Here’s everything you need to know to make it yourself at home, as reported by the Express.
Rick Stein’s crab and sweetcorn soup
Ingredients
For the stock
- 1.2 litres good chicken stock
- Six thin slices of root ginger
- Three bunches of spring onions, roughly chopped
- 1/2 tsp whole white peppercorns
For the soup
- Two fresh sweetcorn cobs
- 225g fresh white crab meat
- Five tsp cornflour
- One tsp. very finely chopped root ginger
- Two spring onions, cut into 2.5cm pieces and finely shredded lengthways
- One tbsp light soy sauce
- One tbsp Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- One egg white, lightly beaten
- Salt and black pepper
Method
Start by boiling chicken stock, ginger, spring onions, and peppercorns, letting them infuse for 20 minutes before straining. Cool the broth slightly while you prepare the remaining ingredients.
Sweetcorn kernels are sliced from their cobs and simmered in the stock for five minutes. The crab meat should be checked for shell fragments and kept as intact as possible for texture.
Finally, thicken the soup with cornflour mixed with water to a smooth paste, stirring into the mix and simmering for an additional two minutes.
Add the crab meat, ginger, spring onions, soy sauce and the rice wine or sherry to the soup, then season it with salt and pepper according to your taste. Let it simmer for a minute.
After that, stir the soup, remove the spoon, and slowly pour in the beaten egg white until it forms long, thin strands in the soup. Allow everything to simmer for about 30 seconds before serving.