Bring warmth into your home with our family’s favourite Chinese Watercress Soup. It’s light, highly nutritious and the perfect way to end any day. Just throw everything into a pot and let it simmer away to transform into a classic homely soup!
Chinese Watercress Soup Recipe
If I had to choose my favourite soup of all time, it would be this one. A simmering pot of Grandma’s Chinese Watercress Soup is one of the most welcoming sights to come home to after school or work!
Alongside our family’s Chinese Fish Soup (魚頭爐) and Fish Maw Soup, it’s one of those deeply nourishing broths I could have every single day.
It’s surprisingly simple to make, but the results are sensational. And if you want to know how to enjoy Chinese Watercress Soup the BEST way, keep on reading.
- Get a large bowl and fill it up. No measley small rice bowls because if you’re anything like me, you’ll go for seconds or thirds.
- Slurp up the light chicken and pork broth infused with earthy watercress flavours. Appreciate how its gentle savouriness lingers on your tongue.
- Grab a pair of chopsticks and bite into crunchy yet wonderfully soft watercress full of broth sweetness.
- Find a piece of juicy fall-off-the-bone pork, let it melt in your mouth and polish off the rest of the soup!
Our family loves using extra pork for this recipe so we can savour more fall apart pork, but you can certainly make Chinese Watercress Soup with chicken as well.
Regardless of your preference, this soup is one you cannot miss!
What is watercress soup good for?
We’re pretty fortunate that Grandma makes Chinese Watercress Soup at least once a fortnight.
I suspect it’s because the plant itself is really easy to find in Asian supermarkets, but it definitely doesn’t hurt that watercress also comes with tonnes of nutrients and tastes so good. Win-win, I say!
It’s actually a TRIPLE win, if you ask me. Watercress is incredibly dense in vitamins for a vegetable that’s so low in calories! It contains minerals such as calcium and antioxidants that are said to help with diabetes.
One serving of our Chinese Watercress Soup will mean you get to enjoy the nutrients found in watercress, including vitamins K, C and A.
You don’t even have to have much. Eating just one cup of watercress a day is enough to meet your daily vitamin K quota. Time to get some soup in!
How do you prepare watercress for soup?
Our family prepares all greens in the same way, and preparing watercress for soup is no different. Here’s how we get the best results for our Chinese Watercress Soup:
Divide the watercress into smaller segments. This really depends on personal preference, but Grandma usually breaks each watercress into 10 cm (4″) long parts and rests them in a colander, ready to be washed.
Every part of watercress can be eaten, so you can keep the stalks for the soup!
Wash the watercress. Just like how we prepare the greens for our Stir Fried Pea Shoots with Garlic and Chinese Broccoli (Gai Lan) with Oyster Sauce, the watercress is washed in a sink of cold salted water, rinsed then drained in a colander and left to drip dry until they’re ready to be used.
Tip: When shopping for watercress, avoid the older stems because it will remain tough when cooked. To choose the younger ones, press your nail into the stem. If it breaks through easily, the watercress will remain tender in the soup.
What you'll need for Chinese Watercress Soup
- 5 L chicken and pork stock (use more pork ribs if you like eating it with the soup)
- 2 bundles watercress (we buy it from the local Asian supermarket)
- 3 dehydrated shiitake mushrooms
- 2 dried honey dates
- 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 3 dried jujubes (Chinese red dates)
- 1 tsp salt, or to taste
- 1 tbsp chicken bouillon powder
How to make Chinese Watercress Soup
Bring the chicken and pork stock to a boil and add the chicken bouillon powder along with the salt.
Throw in the carrots, mushrooms, honey dates and jujubes and let it simmer for 15 minutes.
When the carrots have softened, bring the broth up to a boil and add the watercress in.
Keep the soup on a medium to low heat so that it gently simmers for another 20 minutes.
To serve, enjoy as is or pour over your leftover rice!
More Soups for the family
Weeknight dinners aren’t complete without a nutritious soup! Try these out for your next family meal:
Our Chinese Watercress Soup’s steps can be used for most Chinese soups. But whichever soup you cook, make sure to enjoy it with your family!
Lots of Love,
Jeannette
Chinese Watercress Soup (西洋菜汤)
Ingredients
- 5 L chicken and pork stock (use more pork ribs if you like eating it with the soup)
- 2 bundles watercress (we buy it from the local Asian supermarket)
- 3 dehydrated shiitake mushrooms
- 2 dried honey dates
- 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 3 dried jujubes (Chinese red dates)
- 1 tsp salt, or to taste
- 1 tbsp chicken bouillon powder
Instructions
- Bring the chicken and pork stock to a boil and add the chicken bouillon powder along with the salt.
- Throw in the carrots, mushrooms, honey dates and jujubes and let it simmer for 15 minutes.
- When the carrots have softened, bring the broth up to a boil and add the watercress in.
- Keep the soup on a medium to low heat so that it gently simmers for another 20 minutes.
- To serve, enjoy as is or pour over your leftover rice!
I love trying soups like this at home! Gives you more reason to stay home and eat rather than eating out!
Agreed! This one will make you want to stay at home for sure 😉
This soup looks so comforting and flavorful. Perfect on a cold day.
Thanks! It certainly is!
I love a great soup recipe and this looks so delicious! I love the addition of watercress!
Thanks, Shanika! Watercress makes this soup amazing!
We make soup at least once a week. Can’t wait to try this one!
I hope you enjoy this one!
What a delicious and comforting soup! Its been so cold and rainy here so I tried this for lunch. I loved it!
Thanks Cindy! It’s been raining a tonne here too! Soups are perfect for this weather!
Hi Jeannette, I have no words to describe how delicious this soup is, and how I find your recipe simple but with great flavors. I will always make this Chinese watercress soup from now on, in our night party with friends and family. This soup is full of nutrition’s. Thanks a lot for sharing the recipe. Just loved the recipe!
Thank you for your kind words, Emma! I’m glad you liked our family recipe because we love sharing it!
Hi, could you show how dried watercress looks like? Are they sold in packs? I live in Sweden and I can’t find fresh watercress either. Curious to see if I could find dried I was here. Thanks!
Hi! I haven’t personally come across any dried watercress before, but you can try to see if it’s available online if you can’t find it locally 😀
watercress grows in small creeks with running water, maybe try have a look around your area for small creeks and pick some yourself, if you find some make sure you snap the leaf about 2cm above the water and don’t take the root.
Thanks for the information! I’ll keep my eye out!
I notice that this recipe mentions pork ribs several times, but they are not ingredients in the recipe, nor does it say anything about how to cook them. They are not necessarily included in the chicken and pork stock either. I don’t generally eat meat that has been cooked so long in a stock. So I guess that one just braises the spare ribs in an already made stock until they are tender and then finishes the recipe as above. Italians often make a very similar stock called a brodo for using in minestrone soup, particularly Ameliana style minestrone that uses potato instead of pasta.
Hi Chef Marty,
The pork ribs can be added into the stock as it cooks if you like and are entirely optional. When cooked for hours, they soften to the point where they will be very tender. The chicken and pork stock is a guide on how to make a stock, so you can use what you’d prefer or what you have available. Thanks for letting me know about the Italian brodo. It sounds wonderful!