I did mention a few posts ago that I would put up a post on how to cook chicken soup – Foochow style for mee sua (string/thread noodles)…
Usually, I will chop the chicken into bite-size pieces and marinate it with the home-made Foochow red wine…
If you do not have that special type of wine, then you may do without it. Do not use the red wine available at the Chinese drug stores or supermarkets. I have tried using it once and it tasted completely different. In fact, it did not even taste good. It would be better to cook the soup without any wine and later, when you want to eat the mee sua, you can add a spoonful or more of brandy. That is very nice too!
All you need to cook the soup is some ginger…
You can cut it into slices, bruise it or pound it…and you may add more if you like a strong ginger taste. The other things are optional. For instance, you may wish to add some dried shitake mushrooms…
Soak them in hot water first to soften them and cut away the stems. You may also want to add some of these red wolfberries which are supposed to be good for the eyes…
These are easily available at the Chinese medical stores. Just rinse them and throw them into the soup later.
To start cooking, heat up a little bit of oil in the wok – two tablespoons would be sufficient. You should not add too much as there will be additional fat from the chicken and you may end up with an unpleasantly oily soup. Throw in the ginger…
…and sauté it for a while before you throw in the chicken. Mix it well with the ginger and the oil. You may want to use sesame oil instead of the other types of cooking oil for that additional fragrance.
Cover the wok and let it cook for a while till all the juices have come out of the chicken…
Then, add water…and the shitake mushrooms and wolfberries, if you are using those…
Let it simmer as long as possible as the longer you simmer it, the “sweeter” and tastier your soup. Be forewarned though that some chicken sold in the market these days seems to be extra soft and will disintegrate after being cooked for a while. It would be good to use kampong chicken – the type that is allowed to run freely and fed on corn. These are tougher and would allow longer cooking to enhance the flavour of your soup and they are supposed to be healthier and more nutritious too. They say black chicken is good too, but as far as I am concerned, no, thank you! LOL!!!
Finally, add salt and msg according to taste and your chicken soup is ready. Now, you can boil some water to cook your mee sua…
When the water has started boiling, throw in the mee sua…and once it softens and floats up, it is cooked. Put it in a bowl and add the chicken soup…
There you have it! Simple, isn’t it? And delicious too!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 
ok .. im the FC .. ha ha ha. :p
by the way, really don’t have the time to read all because Mandy is waiting for me downstairs while I was halfway reading your blog. so, see you in sibu or bintulu or wherever lah.
She’s sending you to the airport? Charge him double, Mandy!!!
yummy… think i’ll have that for breakfast… going 2 sibu later
VERY heavy rain. I’ve my long-lost cousins in town. They said they would explore Sibu town centre this morning…I wonder how!
Well done. This looks great! cook for me pls!
Hey! Aren’t you in Melbourne? Still got time to blog kah? Have fun there!
Meesua..good for us, no need to bite so much, right? long time never eat that cos no more mee sua in the house, must buy from the medicine shop outside, they sell those from Sitiawan, very nice and not so lembik too..
The last time i cook this, i put in minced pork and sawi, cos i was sick then.. 🙂
LOL!!!…Here, we take with chicken soup mostly. Ya…Sitiawan lots of Foochows. Also got factory-made ones in nice red boxes from places like Malacca…but expensive. Good for toothless people like me… Hahahahaha!!!
sometimes i will cook soup like tat oso but without the foochow red wine. Quite easy n save lots of time. Cannot afford mee sua here so eat with plain rice. very nice and very effective to keep warm.
Yes, ginger’s good for keeping warm. That’s why ladies in confinement take lots of it! Can’t get mee sua there…or at least not in Plymouth when I was there. Their longevity noodles in the Chinese shops not like our mee sua! More like mihun…
Looks very good!
YUM!
You should be familiar with this, being a Foochow. I can cook this for you the next time you stay at my place…
That bowl of nice mee sua just nice for a cold rainy morning…hungry now as this morning took a lousy bowl of laksa. Not nice at all.
Where did you go for your “lousy bowl of laksa”? Only a few places here where the laksa isn;t too bad… Others should be avoided.
I just cooked that on Monday.. 😛 but I don’t add MSG though..
That’s optional… If you can simmer the chicken for a long time to get the full flavour, then you can dispense with the msg. The mee sua is usually salty enough so there’s no need for that too.
The mee sua that i got here is tasteless.. lol.. they say it’s homemade so I guess they ditched the salt as well.. lol..
Well, it IS tasteless…or maybe a little bit salty and a bit of its own mee sua taste to the most.
i made mee sua using pork soup version once, it was really nice! last time my sister cooked mee sua sibu version for breakfast few times when we balik kampung, but i always missed it because i’m 15 minutes late waking up lol!
Poor thing! You can try mee sua with abalone mushrooms and egg – instead of the chicken. Nice also! Last time we cooked with “kulat ta’un” (The Chinese calls it chicken mushroom)…but I think it is extinct now! Don’t find it in the market anymore…
Mee sua without the foochow wine is unthinkable! Fortunately I have easy access to foochow wine here.
My parents don’t take Foochow red wine. I heard something about it “washing away” all the medication or something. So, I would have to add my own when eating the mee sua…or in the absence of Foochow red wine, adding brandy or whiskey is an alternative. VERY nice also!
owh…never try using brandy or whiskey…won’t get drunk hoh? lol….
Two or three spoonfuls only…ok one! LOL!!!
ok! will try that when got back home this dec. if my mom scold then i said the uncle from sibu taught me one. 😀
You’ll be home in December? Hopping over to Sibu anytime? I’m sure your mum has cooked this before? In Sibu, you can get this at the coffee shops too – some very nice ones around. Mee sua in Foochow red wine chicken soup and if you prefer black chicken, they have that too. Not for me though, no thanks! LOL!!!
arrrrggghhhh…….you make miss home a lot. it has been a while since i last tasted home cooked mee sua already….i love the chicken soup very much, especially if you add in the foo chow red wine, that one is superb. I am hungry…:(
Holidays coming up end of the year? Not going home?…I’ll be going to Sg Petani next week. You’re having your exams round this time, right? Good luck!
hehe…yea. sure! thank you!:)surrender to God. 😀
Ooi! God helps those who help themselves! Hahahahaha!
I belanja mandy breakfast :p we ate dim sum .. no pigchers la.
Baby’s gone back already? So no DSLR lah? No wonder pandai2 kritik my photo… So perasan! LOL!!!
yeah lo he belanja i makan dim sum…i wanted to charge him triple..but too paiseh to open my mouth… 🙂 maybe next time la…
Hiaz!!! Next time, you must do it! Itu banker kot! Kaya raya!b Hahahahaha!
Wow, I’ll keep this for my next confinement! It looks simple and might even try it on ordinary day.. 🙂
What do you usually take on your confinement? Kacangma chicken?…Oooo…love that! LOL!!!
I normally like to cook meesua with minced meat…or meat meat ball…no wine or sesame oil..i just add “dong cai” and add egg..best!!!!!!
I guess this is the “lazy” version la…. hehehe!!
How so many different ways of cooking mee sua over there! I guess it’s up to the individual what he/she wants to eat it with…
its simple and delicious i agree with mee sua… 😉
how i parking knew d company i work suddenly change management n deduct sgd 300 from our salary…
Ah! Finally something you can eat…and like! Come, come to Sibu and I’ll cook for you. S$300? Aiyor…but then again, economy not so good mah! Be thankful you have a job… I hear some BIG companies still having problems, planning ways to cut corners…or even get rid of employees…
Thanks for tip about not adding chinese cooking wine. Am planning to cook chicken soup and mee sua tomorrow.
Stella, where do you get foochow red wine from? You made it yourself ka?
She’s bootlegging… Hahahahahahaha!!! Post on FB how you fare with your chicken soup and mee sua…
I think STP meant the red cooking wine from the chinese shops. I have tried with the Pagoda brand of Chinese cooking wine…and that’s quite nice (not as aromatic as the foochow red wine, but is a good substitute) if you add lots!…haha.
Dunno Pagoda or any other brand. Tried one…and that was it. I also tried the Sarawak factory-made so-called Foochow red wine – not nice at all, nothing like the real thing!
C4STP,used to make them long ago,now lazy, so I bought them.
Gee! It’s true! She can make them… Not bad! Not bad at all!
ic u peel off some of the skin–taste better with skin on-so lemak so sedap.
C4stp – where did u get yr meesua–Dimong1 brought a lot back said her grandchildren love them.
I don’t like the bits of skin floating in the clear soup. Looks like dirty… Hah! Must be the Foochow in the grandkids’ blood…
Pollie, Asian shops got mah. But of course not as ‘ew’ (fine) as the ones back home la.
Lucky u all! In Plymouth – Chinese shop run by some Hongkong people, only longevity noodles from China and it was more like mihun!
i dont know how to make this.. but it sure looks yummy =)
Oh yeah, you’re the one who can’t cook anything, right? LOL!!! How did you survive in college? Ate out all the time…or instant noodles?
gonna try this. bookmarked!
Bet your mum cooks this too! And kacang ma chicken with white wine! Yum! Yum! Drool! LOL!!!
I love it bro. I am going to try this one for sure. It looks very easy and very damn yummy too. :p
It is. I cooked it for my West Malaysian friends when we were in the UK and they loved it! Go ahead and give it a try!
I just had that chicken soup and mee suah yesterday! Mee suah and kampung chicken all the way from Sibu, but minus the foochow red wine. 😦
Yea, this dish is simple and delicious!!! I never get bored over it.
It is definitely nicer with kampung chicken as you can simmer longer to get the taste of the chicken in the soup. You can’t cook ordinary chicken too long these days – the meat will disintegrate and I would resort to using chicken stock cubes or granules…
It’s been a long time since i last ate mee sua, i think it was last year’s CNY since i did not celebrate this year’s because of the frigging NS…-.- Kinda see it as a chore.. this eating mee sua thingy, have to make sure it will not putus halfway.. grr.. always fail at that part.
You’re so superstitious?…Gee! Your mum doesn’t cook that often?…Anyway, a lot of places with nice mee sua in Sibu – Yum Yum, for one…but I haven’t been there for a while now so I dunno if the stall’s still there.
This is not too difficult to do especially when I have the magic red wine you gave me! Yippie!! Thanks a million!
Good luck! Hope you like it! I do…and so did Shereen when she was in town.