A bowl of steaming hot soup during cold winter, especially this year, sounds so good! I LOVE soup just for the taste, but it happens to have some health benefits too!

Soybean sprouts are known to have 'isoflavone' which is beneficial for women near menopause. Also it's known within Koreans to help hangovers after heavy drinking by breaking down alcohol. So maybe next time you wanna try the Korean way to ease your hangover LOL.

Many Koreans are known to be heavy drinkers (not including me LOL) and they eat many different kinds of soup to relieve hangovers. Some spicy and some clear soup like what I am going to share today. This clear sprouts soup that I'm going to share is one of the popular ones.

However, you don't have to be a heavy drinker to enjoy this soup. I love to eat rice and this soup with Kimchi. Simple but tasty meal and healthy too!

Let's Start!

Ingredients

1 bag soybean sprouts (1lb)
3 scallions
1/2 gallon water
1tbsp salt
1tbsp minced garlic

Wash sprouts and put them in a pot with water, salt, and garlic.
Cover the pot and bring it to boil on high temperature.

After it starts to boil, cook it for another 5 minutes and then lower the temperature to about knob 6 (we have number dial) and put scallions.

Cook 5 more minutes again.

If you want it to be little spicy, you can add some red pepper flakes.

Sorry everyone...I wasn't there to take the picture step by step. Young did her best to take the picture and still get the recipe right so Yay! And I'm sure you wonderful cooks can do it okay ^^

Eat it with a bowl of rice and kimchi! They go so well!

(WHISPER: Mom...that's little too much rice there....LOL...need bigger bowl for the soup and some more kimchi please~!)

***NOTE**
Do not confuse Soybean sprouts and Mung bean sprouts!
Soybean sprouts and Mung bean sprouts usually are sold on the same section. Just make sure that you get SOYBEAN SPROUTS for this soup! Soybean sprouts have bigger and yellow head (?). Mung bean sprouts are not used for this kind of clear soup. It's good for Vietnamese noodle or for sidedish ^^
Try not to keep soybean sprouts in the refrigerator no more than a day. It goes bad real fast so eat it as fast as possible!
**********

So when you get the right kind of sprout and eat it fast, you'll get lots of health benefits while pleasing your tummy!

Enjoy!

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Ingredients (Following makes about 4 servings)
40g dried seaweed
200g beef (any beef used for stew/stock is fine)
2tsp salt
1tsp Dashida (Beef Stock Powder)
1/2 tsp ground/minced garlic
1tsp sesame oil

Ok, Let's Start!


First thing is to hydrate dry seaweed. Soak in water till it get nice and plump. Wash them first and then cut into bite sizes.

Also cut beef into bite sizes as well. This will be used to cook nice broth. If you don't like beef you can substitute with mussels or just don't put anything to make clear soup. Beef broth is usually the original birthday soup and clear soup with only seaweed is for new moms. But that doesn't mean you cannot choose your preference right? I personally like Miyuk Gook with mussels.

Get a pot and fry seaweed with sesame oil and garlic ONLY. No beef Yet!
Quickly fry so the flavor gets locked in. No need to do too much. Now pour 16 cups of water and add beef. Add salt and Dashida too. If you don't like Dashida, you can leave it out. But we like to add just a little bit to pull flavors together for better taste. Boil at high temperature.

As it starts to boil, you will see these kind of impurities (blood etc...) floating on top.

Now comes the most important step of the recipe. This cannot stay. We need to take them out.

So wait and when it seems like most of them are on top, start skimming those nasty stuff off from the soup and discard. Be careful not to get too much of soup off with it. This will help soup taste nice and clean.

When you are done discarding the impurities, turn down the heat to med (about to 5 on our stove knob) and cook for another 15 minutes.
And you are DONE!

ENJOY!