Yang Sheng Le Herbal Soup Concentrate and my Truffle Ginseng Chicken Soup

Hello, it's August already! With national day coming in about a week's time, I'm going to put the spotlight on some "Made in Singapore" products. We consume so much imported products (these obviously carry a bigger carbon footprint) but there are some local products that are quite interesting.



My friend recommended this "Yang Sheng Le" herbal soup concentrate to me, and I bought a bottle (Revitalize at S$7.50) at Eu Yan Sang to try. This is a collaboration between Maggi and Eu Yan Sang, and it looks like it's a "herbal soup for busy people"! Come home from work, boil this up with some water, add chicken and voila. Herbal chicken soup in less than half an hour.

I generally feel guilty using convenience products because they are often not the healthiest things around. But this product is all-natural, has no preservatives or artificial colouring/flavouring, and no added MSG. Herbal goodness in a bottle? Really? Well, sounds better to me than canned minestrone.



This is what's inside the package. A bottle of very thick soup paste with a sachet of wolfberries. You can add more of your own wolfberries if you like. This small bottle will produce enough soup for four persons.

For me, I boiled this with half a chicken (it called for 600g chicken). It says to use 1L water - sounds very little but stick to it. I added more water to cover the chicken completely and it tasted a bit diluted. Next time I'll just hack the chicken into small pieces and use exactly 1L. But even when diluted, the soup smelled wonderful and filled my kitchen with the aroma of ginseng.

Since I added too much water, I had to season it a little. Regular salt didn't taste as nice, so I threw in some truffle salt. Ooh, happy accident - ginseng and truffle actually go quite nicely together. For me, anyway (hubby didn't like it).



So there you go. American Ginseng and Truffle-Scented Herbal Chicken Soup! If you prefer a less oily soup, remove the skin from the chicken before boiling it. I think a little bit of fat is fine. Adds a nice glisten.

I never knew about this Yang Sheng Le product until now. Apparently it's been around for at least 3 years, and even won some awards. You can find it in selected supermarkets and all Eu Yan Sang outlets.

There are four varieties available in this series:

* Renewal: with Dang Gui (plus bei qi, yu zhu and nan zao).
* Nourish: with Cordyceps (plus bei sha shen, bei qi, yu zhu and chen pi).
* Revitalize: with American Ginseng (plus huai shan, gou qi, yu zhu and long yan).
* Boost: with Lingzhi (plus da zao, gou qi, fu ling and dang shen).

And I found eight recipes online with creative uses for the herbal soup concentrate. You can make:

• YANG SHENG LE Claypot Rice
• Nourishing Pan-Fried Codfish
• Revitalizing Stir-Fried "Bai Ling" Mushrooms
• Nourishing Chicken & Fish Maw Soup
• Renewing Chicken Stew
• Nourishing Baked Chicken
• Revitalizing Sliced Fish Soup
• Soothing Lingzhi Soup

So actually, there's lots of dishes you can make beyond soup with this! I think the herbal flavours will add interest to normal dishes too.

* product photo (above) from website