Pumpkin soup using thermal pot.

 

Boiled Pumpin soup with the help of thermal pot.
A soup I usually prepare at least 3 hours before meal.

6 Large seedless dried red dates (add more for smaller red dates)
1 dried honey date
2 clove garlic
2 slice chinese ham (optional)

I usually start boiling the dried ingredients so that I can better get the taste of them into the soup.
Wash them and place them into the boiling pot.
I am using a 3 litre thermal pot.
I started with less than 1/2 pot of water. We can add more later if we feel there are not enough water.

Put all dried ingredients into the pot. Bring them to boil. Then turn the heat down to the lowest and let it simmer with lid close. We will just add more ingredients to this pot of soup one by one later. No worry.

Lets cut 1 carrot.
Place them together with the soup to boil.

Now the pork ribs.
I used 250 gram of frozen pork ribs.
We need to par boil the pork ribs to get rid of the frozen pork smell.

Trim off excess fat from the pork ribs.
To par boil
 I add 1 teaspoon of salt to another pot of water.
When water at high boiling point, place the ribs into water.
Close the pot for it to boil if the water cools down.
Upon boiling, open the lid. Let it boil until we see scums floating. The meat is ready.
Sometimes, the meat is clean, so we just need to high boil at about 3 minutes, the meat is ready.

Pick up the pork ribs, transfer them to the soup we are simmering. Let the soup boil with the pork ribs for a high, then let it simmer for another 10 minutes.

Turn up the heat to boil at high heat again before transfering to the thermal pot and leave it for at least 1 hour.

Now lets prepare the main ingredients.
In order not to overcook pumpkin, I usually boil them only 1 hour before meal.

Wash the skin. make sure the skin is scrub clean.
The skin will help to hold the pumpkin meat while boiling, but we may not eat them.

Pumpkin can be hard to cut. Use the mullet to help to chop them into even pieces.

1 hour before meal, add the pumpkin into the soup and bring to boil.
From here, I can see the water is not enough.

So I add more water up-ensure the pumpkin are submerged in the water.

Next, wash 1 tablespoon of wolfberries.

Throw them into the pot.

Bring to high boiling tempreature.
Add a pinch of salt, and taste test the salt level.

Placed it back to the thermal pot and leave it for at least 1 hour before serve