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Egg Drop Soup

This six-ingredient egg drop soup is as impressively restaurant-authentic as it is quick and easy to make.
Course Soup
Cuisine Chinese
Servings 1 to 2 (can be doubled, tripled, quadrupled...)

Ingredients

  • 1-1/2 cups chicken broth
  • 1 egg
  • 3 teaspoons cornstarch divided
  • water
  • 1/8 teaspoon sesame oil
  • salt to taste
  • Optional: cubed silken tofu, finely minced scallions, cooked chicken, miso paste, fish sauce, black pepper

Instructions

  • In a cup or little bowl, dissolve 2 teaspoons of cornstarch in a little water. Break the egg into another small bowl. Sprinkle the remaining 1 teaspoon of cornstarch over the egg and beat the egg so that the cornstarch dissolves into it—should just take half a minute.
  • Bring the chicken broth to a simmer in a saucepan. When it starts to move, spoon two or three tablespoons of broth into the dissolved cornstarch, to warm it up. Then pour the cornstarch mixture into the soup and stir with a whisk. Stir until the soup becomes clear again (meaning the cornstarch is cooked) and the soup becomes slightly thickened. You don’t want a thick glop—just a bit of thickening. If it doesn’t look thick enough to you, add a little more cornstarch in the same fashion.
  • When the stock is ready, and moving at a gentle simmer, pour in the egg. The way that works the best for me is to place a fork at the lip of the cup and pour the egg through the tines. Stir it immediately, just once or twice. Turn off the heat—the egg is cooked. Stir in the sesame oil, adjust seasoning with salt, if needed, and that’s it. Garnish with scallions, if you like. Serve.

Kitchen Notes

Variations on a delicious theme. If you like, you can add some cubed silken tofu—put the cold tofu in the bowl and pour the hot soup over it and it will heat nicely. We’ve also done things like add bits of cooked chicken, a grating of black pepper, and even a tad of white miso paste or Vietnamese fish sauce stirred in during the heating-the-stock phase. All of those additional things are nice, but just the basic is delightfully enough. Add this to your comfort food rotation.