Egg Drop Soup and Spam Fried Rice

I imagine some will wonder what kind of culinary disaster Uncle T had in his kitchen with this combination.  One, Spam Fried Rice, is a dish I've made several times as a quick tasty meal.  The Egg Drop Soup was a request from the good wife.  We've both had some sort of virus and have been eating lots of homemade soups as part of our treatment.  The good wife had a craving for the Egg Drop Soup which she always gets when we go out to the local Asian buffet.  Due to both of us being sick it meant making it at home.  As easy as it is I should have started doing it sooner.

A hot bowl of Egg Drop Soup

In researching recipes for Egg Drop Soup I came across a wide variety that ranged from 3 ingredients to others with almost a dozen ingredients.  None of these totals include the seasoning which also varied greatly.  In the end, as usual, I came up with a recipe that would suit our tastes and the purpose for which it was being eaten.


Egg Drop Soup


1 quart + 1/4 cup chicken broth
3 - 4 eggs
1/4 cup + 1 Tbs cornstarch
1 Tbs water
4 oz mushrooms, sliced
4 green onions
1 - 2 tsp salt
1 - 2 tsp white pepper
1 - 2 tsp 7 spice
1 - 2 tsp turmeric
1 Tbs roasted sesame oil


Slice the mushrooms thinly and set aside.  Slice the green onions, including the green tops, thinly and add to the mushrooms.  Bring 1 quart of chicken broth to a low boil and add the mushrooms and onions.  Cook for 5 minutes.  Add the spices starting with 1 Tsp each and stir into the broth.  Taste and add more of each to suit tastes.  Add the roasted sesame oil and stir in.  Combine cornstarch and remaining chicken broth and pour into the pot and stir.  You are looking for just slightly thickened broth as you are trying for a smooth mouth feel.   Crack the eggs into a measuring cup and break yolks.  Combine the 1 Tbs cornstarch and 1 Tbs water and add to the eggs and stir.  Bring the soup to a higher boil and slowly pour in the eggs while stirring the soup.  Pouring the eggs slowly will produce the nice thin threads of egg.  Serve hot and enjoy.  This will serve 4 people.


The cornstarch in the eggs was reported to make the egg strands softer and they did have a nice feel to them.  Since I haven't made this soup without cornstarch in the eggs I can't say for sure that it works but I've heard the same thing about adding cornstarch to scrambled eggs.  I also found recipes fairly evenly split about whether or not to have the turmeric.  As for the 7 spice, I used a middle eastern spice blend that I get from a local Mediterranean market run by a Lebanese family.  The recipes that called for something similar called for Chinese 5 spice which I didn't have at the house. 

A good bowl of Spam Fried Rice

The Spam Fried Rice came about a few months ago while getting ready to fix lunch after church one Sunday.  I had started out getting ready to make Spam Musubi, aka Hawaiian sushi, when I had the idea.  Fried rice usually calls for using leftover rice but I didn't see the need to make a double recipe sometime just to have enough leftover rice to make fried rice.  While the rice cooked in the pressure cooker I prepped and cooked most everything else.  It's too easy since there is no real hard fast list of ingredients for the most part.  The only must haves are rice and soy sauce, everything else is up to what you want or have left in the refrigerator.


Spam Fried Rice


1 can Spam, we use the low Sodium Spam
1.5 cups uncooked rice
water
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup frozen green peas, thawed
3 green onions, white and green parts sliced
1 egg
sesame oil
soy sauce
salt
pepper

Take the Spam out of the can and slice through the side into at least 6 slices.  Cut each slice into 4 strips and then the strips into 3 pieces.  You'll end up with at least 72 Spam pieces.  Put them into a hot pan, I use a shallow stock pot, and start to brown.  Stir them to brown on a couple of sides and remove from the pot.  Add a bit of sesame oil and add the mushrooms.  Season the mushrooms with salt and pepper.  Once the mushrooms are browned, remove them from the pot.  Add more sesame oil if necessary and put in the onions.  Cook until the onions are translucent and remove.  While the mushrooms are cooking, crack the egg into a bowl and scramble it up and add just a bit of water.  Once the onions are removed, turn off the heat them pour the scrambled egg into the pot and move pot to coat the bottom evenly with the egg.  The residual heat should be enough to cook the egg.  Once the egg is cooked, break it apart and add to the other things that have been removed from the pot.  Add 1 - 2 Tbs sesame oil to the pot and bring to heat.  Add the rice and stir well.  Start adding soy sauce and stirring until you get the color you want.  Add the other ingredients and combine well, the peas will be heated up enough when added at the end.  Serve hot.  This serves 4.

A quick tasty hot supper

See, quick simple and full of flavor.  I've also made it using sliced red peppers from the freezer or slices of carrot.  I've even added a 1/4 cup of whole kernel corn that was in the freezer.  The egg and peas are in there simply because just about every place I've gotten fried rice from has had them in theirs.


Since this was one meal and I wanted things done as close together as possible I did the Egg Drop Soup up to the point just before adding the eggs.  Once the Spam Fried Rice was done, I started stirring the soup and adding the egg.


Give these recipes a try either together or for different meals.  I think you'll be pleased with them either way.  Let me know what you think.


Uncle T