How to Add Flavor to Vegetable Soup

How do you flavor soups without meat? This was a question on my mind when I first got into preparing vegetarian meals for my spouse. I grew up in a meat-eating household and my earliest memories of a homecooked meal involves soups flavored by chicken bones or pork ribs. So, other than the Chinese herbs for herbal soup, vegetarian soup every other day then was basically root vegetables, water and a splash of soy sauce... until my spouse taught me to add Lion's Mane mushrooms and vegetarian "mutton".

The following is a list of ingredients I would now usually add to boost my soup's flavor. Of course, I don't add them all in one single soup! One cooking tip for beginner cooks is to always taste your cooking, so you can adjust the sodium accordingly, and not serve up a bland or over-salty dish.

Shiitake Mushroom 花菇 / 冬菇 / 香菇

There are many different kinds of edible mushrooms that you can use to flavor your soups. My personal favorite is the dried shiitake mushroom as it perfumes any dishes with its strong fragrance. Another reason to like dried shiitake mushrooms is that they are widely available in Singapore and can be easily purchased from supermarkets and Chinese medical halls.

You can also get fresh shiitake mushrooms from most supermarkets. Personally, I don't find them as fragrant as the dried version. However they are much easier to slice, and a good add to western/fusion meals. For example, if I were to prepare vegetarian pasta, I'm more likely to use the fresh ones rather than the dried ones.

The Burning Kitchen has great tips for selecting dried shiitake mushrooms (I didn't know about the 3 grades!). I read somewhere that the darker mushrooms have more umami.

I'm not an expert in mushroom selection, but I usually go for whole mushrooms with large umbrella-like caps as it's much easier to snip with a pair of strong kitchen scissors, and the sliced pieces take less time to rehydrate. I know, I know... there's pre-sliced dried mushrooms available in the market (I've seen those featured in many Korean homemaker YouTube videos which I'm a great fan of!). The Burning Kitchen would enlighten you on why not to buy pre-sliced mushrooms.

As someone who takes delight in meal prep, I actually don't enjoy waiting for dried mushrooms to rehydrate. After 10 minutes of soaking in hot water, sometimes the centers and stalks of the mushrooms would still remain tough. And I often scald my fingertips when squeezing out excess liquids. Moreover, slicing soaked mushrooms on the cutting board would leave dark marks upon abrasion. Scrub away!

Oh! Don't throw away the soaking water and the mushroom stalks. They actually do add great flavor to the soups! Like almost everyone else who finds the woody stalks difficult to chew and hence discard them, my spouse shares with me that you can slice the soaked stalks thinly and add them to your dishes. I tried that a few times, and it's a great tip towards reducing food waste.

If you still don't like the texture of the sliced stalks, try keeping all the odds and ends that you might normally discard (e.g. mushroom stalks, carrot tops, potato peels, onion skin) into a freezer bag. Once the bag is full, add the bag's contents into a pot of boiling water, season with a pinch of salt (and maybe some fresh herbs).. and viola! There you have yourself a good pot of soup base, which you can use for other recipes such as noodle soups.

Hericium Mushroom 猴头菇

In Singapore, this is often known as Lion's Mane Mushroom or Monkey Head Mushroom 猴头菇. During our trip to Kuala Lumpur, I do notice their menus often call it Hedgehog Mushroom.

Despite consuming Chinese cuisine and mushrooms since young, I only came across Lion's Mane a few years ago in a vegetarian restaurant! I was surprised by the chewiness, with its texture similar to crab meat or scallop. Coincidentally, the mushroom in its original form is white in color.

So far we've bought Lion's Mane in the dried form (light brown color) in Chinese medical halls - at Singapore's Chinatown (opposite Hong Lim Market & Food Center), and at Johor Bahru's Taman Sentosa. While the dried Lion's Mane do add some flavor to the soup, I find they lost much of its chewiness, and sometimes do have a bitter aftertaste.

Perhaps it's better to get them fresh. I can't tell you much about its original taste as most eateries tend to add much seasoning to this mushroom to make dishes like vegetarian satay, gong bao chicken, bak kut teh, etc.

While I read from the online vegetarian communities that some supermarkets do stock them fresh, I haven't seen any in the supermarkets I've been to. So far I've only seen the fresh ones available from Mushroom World (not an affiliate link).

Tea Tree Mushroom 茶树菇

This is another mushroom that I came across at the same Chinatown medical hall mentioned above. I haven't seen them at supermarkets yet, but I could be wrong on this.

With weak looking thin stalks with tiny caps, you might be fooled by its appearance to think it would be the dried version of fresh enoki mushrooms. Probably tasteless, fragrant-less.

To prepare them, I snipped off the roots, and cut the rinsed tea tree mushrooms into smaller pieces so that it's easier for my mother-in-law to eat. I added the small bunch of the dried mushrooms to boiling water (along with some goji berries and a tiny pinch of salt). Boy was I surprised by its strong fragrance!

Occasionally I would use tea tree mushrooms in vegetable stir-fries.

Vegetarian "Mutton" 素羊肉

My mother-in-law is the one in charge of purchasing mock meat items in our household. The vegetarian mutton brand she usually orders is Mr. Vege Mutton, available from Friendly Vegetarian (not an affiliate link).

While we're not fond of mock meat, this is probably the "best" mock meat item my husband and I would approve of when compared to other soy proteins. Both of us enjoy the chewiness of the mushroom chucks inside, and it really powers up the soup flavor!

I usually add about 9 pieces of vegetarian mutton to 2 liters of water (along with other ingredients, of course!). The soup can as simple as 4 ingredients, with vegetarian mutton, dried longans, goji berries and water.

As some vegetarian mutton contains vegetable oil (check the packaging label), you would notice some oil floating on the surface of your soup. Scoop that away if you prefer a less greasy soup.

Dried Longan 桂圆 or 龙眼肉

When I was living in Thailand, I love it when it's the longan season. I would buy lots of the fresh fruit to eat while bingeing on Netflix. And when I fly back from Singapore to Thailand, I would go to FairPrice and buy many packs of 六味汤 - simply because it's convenient and I think it's the tastiest herbal soup compared to other herbal combinations. Ha!

One of the key ingredients in that prepacked soup mix is dried longan. I noticed that in some Thai supermarkets, their dried longan are pale in color, almost white. I recalled travelling for more than an hour from my residence in southern Bangkok to a premium supermarket in the central town area just to get dark brown longans! Perhaps I'm more used to the dark brown versions that I've been eating in Singapore; I find that the flavor is better when the dried longans are darker in color.

A simple recipe to preparing dried longan is to boil it with dried red dates (also called jujubes; remove the seeds), and drink the liquids like a tea. You can also add dried goji berries or fresh ginger when boiling. Do note that longan has high sugar content and is considered "heaty" in traditional Chinese medicines. I'll occasionally drink this concoction after mensuration period, or to warm my body on cold rainy days.

Dried Seaweed 紫菜

Dried seaweed is one of the ingredients I will always pick for my yong tau foo whenever it's available at the stall. Just a small piece of the shriveled up mess would suffice to boost the soup flavor. Warning: If you add too much to your soup, you may find there's a fishy smell and taste (not to my liking!).

In case you're confused with the crispy seaweed snacks from Korea or Thailand, the seaweed I'm talking about here is usually from China. The dried seaweed is black in color and often packaged in a round shape. You would be able to find them in most supermarkets, grocery stores or at the dried goods section of a wet market in Singapore.

You can check out the Chinese Seaweed Soup recipe at Wok and Kin. For a vegetarian version, you can swop out the chicken bouillon powder with shiitake mushroom powder or mushroom seasoning. You can omit the pork mince totally, or crack and stir in an egg, or replace the protein with soft tofu. At home, we usually bring water to a boil and add the seaweed, soft tofu (cut into cubes), and dried goji berries.

Kombu 昆布

If you watch Japanese cooking videos, you'll often hear the word "dashi", which refers to a soup base. Dashi can be made with different ingredients, but the most common ones I've seen seems to be made from kombu (dried sea kelp) and/or bonito (dried fermented fish).

To make vegan dashi, simply soak a piece of kombu in room temperature water. No matter how tempted you are to wash the kombu beforehand, don't do so! You do not want to be washing off the white substance that contributes to its umami flavor.

After soaking for about 15 minutes, the kombu will expand in size and become pliable. At this time, you can remove the kombu and gently heat the soaking liquid. Do not boil the liquid if you don't want bitter "seaweed juice".

Oh, if you forgot to remove the kombu before heating, the kombu may feel quite slimy to the touch. Yeah, probably one reason why I'm not adventurous enough to make my own dashi frequently since I've other fuss-free vegetarian options listed here in this article.

Red Miso

One of my favorite activities is to spend hours in huge supermarkets (and Daiso!), going down aisles. My husband can attest to this!

After my health episode, I was searching for healthier food options and came across different colors of miso in the refrigerated shelf of a Japanese supermarket. Prior to this, my knowledge of miso was basically the side of miso soup served to complement the main dish in Japanese restaurants.

Miso is mainly made of fermented soy beans, salt and rice koji (a fermenting "starter"). Given red miso has the richest flavor, that would be a good option to add to your soups. Please add sparingly, and taste as you go since red miso is also saltier than yellow and white miso.

One cooking tip is to stir in your miso paste through a small sieve, so that the sieve captures any undissolved lumps.

I guess this would also be a good time to address the elephant in the room. Some of you may ask why I continue to eat soy products after being diagnosed with a hormonal cancer. Well, I guess there's enough research out there that debates both sides of the coin, so I won't go into details. For me, two things - phytoestrogens works differently, and miso is considered a healthy fermented food.

Light Soy Sauce 醬青 or 生抽

So it's no wonder that the next item on the list is yet another fermented soy product. Soy sauce is like my best friend in the kitchen pantry. A staple in almost every Asian household, I prefer using soy sauce for its flavor, as opposed to sea salt or table salt.

You may be overwhelmed by the options of soy sauce available in the supermarket. Before my YouTube browsing days, I would stick to household brands such as Lee Kum Kee and Tai Hua, or the popular Japanese Kikkoman brand. YouTube has broaden my international cooking knowledge a little, and I've been introduced to the Korean soup soy sauce (guk-ganjang), the Thai Healthy Boy soy sauce, Bragg Liquid Aminos, Tamari (soy sauce with little or no wheat), etc.

I honestly don't know what's the best option to flavor a soup, but I guess a little experimenting every now and then doesn't hurt. And of course, a gentle reminder - they are all salty! So go easy on the sodium, and always taste as you go!

Carrots, Tomatoes, Corn, Onions...

Haha, I hope you noticed that there are more than 1 ingredients in this header!

And these together, combined with potatoes, they form the ingredients that often goes into "ABC soup". ABC soup is a very common soup in probably most Southeast Asian Chinese households. Unlike the popular ABC juice (apple, beetroot, carrot), the alphabets in ABC soup does not spell out the ingredients, but the vitamins A, B and C that comes from the soup ingredients.

Depending on the type of soup you are serving, you may choose to add carrots, tomatoes, corn, or onions - all or either - to enhance the sweetness of the soup. For instance, if you're serving pumpkin or kabocha squash soup, you can mash some of these ingredients for added sweetness. Non-vegetarian versions of ABC soup often includes chicken and ikan bilis or dried anchovies. And if you're an allium-free vegetarian like my husband, feel free to omit onions.