🇭🇰 Hong Kong · Cantonese
Suk mai gangChinese sweet corn soup
A thick Cantonese soup of grated or creamed sweet corn thickened with cornstarch and finished with a swirl of beaten egg, often with minced chicken, crab sticks or snow fungus.
Origin and history
No source gives an origin or a date for this soup. It appears in Hong Kong recipe columns and cookbooks as a thickened soup, or gang, of Cantonese home and restaurant cooking, made from cream-style or blended fresh sweet corn, a starch thickener and egg stirred in at the end, with minced chicken, crab sticks, fish maw or snow fungus as additions.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 small bowls
- Total time
- 50 min
- Hands-on
- 20 min
Ingredients
- 20 g3/4 oz dried snow fungus (xue er), soaked until soft, hard base trimmed, chopped small
- 600 ml2 1/2 cups water
- 4 small fillets chicken fillets, chicken fillets (tenders), finely minced
- 1 tsp salt, in the chicken marinade; add a little more to the soup if needed
- 1 tsp sugar, in the marinade
- 1/2 tsp white pepper, in the marinade
- 400 g14 oz can cream-style sweet corn, or the kernels of 2 fresh cobs blended with a little water and strained
- 2 tbsp cornstarch, stirred into 4 tbsp cold water, as in the Hong Kong cookbook recipe (the Sing Tao page says only "as needed"); water chestnut starch is an alternative
- 1 egg, beaten until smooth
- chopped scallion, optional, to finish
Method
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1. Soak the snow fungus until soft, cut off the hard base and chop the fungus small. Mince the chicken as finely as you can.
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2. Mix the minced chicken with the salt, sugar and pepper and leave it for 15 minutes.
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3. Put the fungus and the water into a pot, bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes, until the fungus is soft.
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4. Stir in the cream-style corn and the chicken, breaking up any lumps, and cook for 5 minutes.
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5. Stir the cornstarch slurry again and pour it in, stirring, and cook for a minute or two until the soup is thick and glossy.
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6. Turn the heat down to low. Pour the beaten egg in a thin stream while stirring slowly, so it sets in fine ribbons. Serve at once, with scallion if you like.
Notes
- The consistency is that of a gang, a thickened soup: it should coat a spoon and flow slowly. If it is too thick, thin it with hot water; if too thin, add a little more slurry.
- The ratio of cream-style corn to water in the first recipe is about 1 to 1.5. The Hong Kong cookbook recipe uses fresh corn instead: kernels of 2 cobs blended with 2 bowls of water and strained, then simmered with 2 more bowls of water and the thickener; it adds soaked, diced fish maw for 5 minutes and stirs in the egg off the heat.
- Another Hong Kong blog recipe grates the corn, boils the cobs in the water for 15 minutes and removes them, then cooks the grated corn 20 minutes before thickening and adding diced crab sticks and the egg.
- If you use water chestnut starch, mix it with its water about 15 minutes ahead and sift it into the soup for a smoother texture.
- This is not corn chowder: there is no milk or potato. It differs from egg drop soup in having the corn as its body.
Adapted from Sun Entertainment (The Headline), Sweet corn, snow fungus and minced chicken soup, Feliz Chan, 菲傭入廚手記：快趣滾靚湯 (Wanli Publishing), via ESDlife: fish maw and corn thick soup with egg, and MamaCheung's Kitchen, Chinese sweet corn soup.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.