Chicken and Mushroom Soup with Brown Rice
This is as much a mushroom soup as it is a chicken soup. Mushrooms are sauteed with onion, garlic and ginger, then simmered in chicken broth with tender chicken breast. Spinach is wilted into the soup, which is served over nutty brown rice, making this a healthful, hearty and full-flavored soup.
Chinese Lotus Root Soup
This vegan soup offers a beautiful balance of flavors with earthy lotus root, sweet carrots and jujubes dates, warming ginger and savory mushrooms and peanuts. Soups like this one are a staple on many Chinese family’s dinner tables not only because they’re light and delicious but also because their ingredients are believed to have healing properties. According to traditional Chinese medicine, a soup’s botanical ingredients, broadly known as “herbs,” are thought to help with everything from calming inflammation to improving vision to boosting energy. Regardless of health claims, it’s certain that each plays a role in making this soup comforting and refreshing, with eye-catching wedges of lotus root as the star. Although most recipes for lotus soup contain pork ribs we made this one vegan, using shiitake mushrooms to give the broth depth of flavor instead. Many of the ingredients require soaking, so be sure to start the process either the night before or in the morning so that you can have this nourishing hot soup ready by dinner.
