Dried Oyster, Hair Vegetable, Mushroom and Soybean Pork Rib Soup

Why people make this soup

The week of Chinese New Year is a wonderful, delicious problem: sea cucumber, fish maw, abalone, pork knuckle, rich chicken, glutinous dumplings stuffed with red bean or sesame — it is nearly impossible to eat lightly. By the third day, many people feel heavy, bloated, and sluggish. This is the soup Nourilo recommends for precisely that moment. Dried oysters and hair vegetable (fa cai) are traditional New Year ingredients — “fa cai” sounds like “get rich” in Cantonese, making them auspicious — but they also happen to be a genuinely useful pairing for the digestive system. Combined with shiitake mushrooms, soybeans, and tangerine peel, this soup is known in Cantonese cooking as being “gui you” (very effective at cutting through grease). It is warming, satisfying, and works in the background to help restore the digestive energy that a week of feasting can drain.