Chicken Sotanghon Soup

Cut the cooking time of chicken sotanghon soup by using chicken bone broth and chicken fillets. Prep time is 10 minutes; cooking time is 15 minutes.

If you’re not seeing a lot of sotanghon (vermicelli noodles) in the photo above, well, I have a tendency to use more meat (or seafood) and vegetables in noodle dishes. It’s the same when I cook Chinese-style fried rice. That’s why my daughters often say, I cook where’s the rice fried rice.

The thing is, when you use more meat or seafood, or both, and vegetables than noodles or rice, the dish becomes a full meal. And that means less work for the cook and the dishwasher. Less stored heat in the house too since the stove is on for a shorter time.

Details about the ingredients, including how to prepare wood ear mushrooms or taingang daga are linked to in the ingredients list in the recipe below.

Chicken Sotanghon Soup

A very traditional Filipino dish, I cooked this chicken sotanghon soup with a few tricks that shorten both the prep time and cooking time tremendously.

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Modern Filipino

Keyword: chicken, Noodle Soup, Sotanghon, Vermicelli

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Servings: 2 people

Author: Connie Veneracion

Ingredients

• 100 grams sotanghon (vermicelli)
• 2 to 3 dried wood ear mushrooms (taingang daga) trimmed and sliced
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• ½ teaspoon annatto powder (see notes after the recipe)
• 2 chicken thigh fillets skin on because fat is flavor
• 3 to 4 cups chicken bone broth (see notes after the recipe)
• patis (fish sauce) to taste
• ? teaspoon ground pepper
• 1 cup thinly sliced white cabbage
• ½ cup julienned carrot
• thinly sliced scallions to garnish
• fried garlic to garnish

Instructions

• Soak the sotanghon and wood ear mushrooms in hot water in separate bowls.
• Stir the annatto powder and oil, and pour into a sauce pan, and turn on the heat.
• Lay the chicken fillets, skin side down, in the oil and cook medium-high heat for a minute or two to render fat from the skin. Flip and cook for another minute.
• Pour in the broth. Season with patis and pepper.
• Bring to the boil.
• Dump the cabbage and carrot into the pan.
• Drain the sotanghon and add to the vegetables in the pan.
• Drain the wood ear mushrooms, trim, slice and add to the sotanghon and vegetables.
• Simmer everything together for five minutes.
• Taste the broth and add more patis, if needed.
• Scoop out the chicken and move to a cutting board.
• Cut the chicken into strips and put back in the pan.
• Simmer the chicken sotanghon soup for another five to seven minutes.
• To serve, ladle the chicken sotanghon soup into bowls and sprinkle with sliced scallions and fried garlic.

Cook’s Notes

Annatto powder is available in Asian groceries. If you don’t have access to it, you will need to use annatto seeds. See how to render color from annatto seeds. If tinting the broth is something you find unnecessary, dispense with the annatto altogether.

If you don’t have chicken bone broth, you will have to start making this dish by making broth. Saute onion and garlic, add bone-in chicken thighs instead of fillets, pour in water and simmer until the chicken is done and you have broth.

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