Today I’m trying out Taste And Tastes Fried Chicken Powder which is raved to taste super yummy! How real is this? I was going to find out!

All of you know I kind of NEVER deep fry stuff at home, and when I do, it’d better be worth it. After trying this powder, I say, IT IS very worth it!! You know what after deep frying I still air fried them to force out the oil. You can skip this step of course. The powder is yummy either way. I say ‘powder is yummy’ because I not only used it to coat chicken wings and drumlets, I also fried mushrooms with them. Soooo good! And as I’m typing this, I realise that I still have pregnancy brain. Why couldn’t I have just air fried the chicken instead of deep fry?! Of course I ccould have.. see this crispy curry fried chicken that I cooked in my air fryer.

I found this video on Taste and Tastes Facebook page that shows you just how beautiful the fried chicken turned out to be:

Looking forward to fry these again. The family loved it!

The post Crispy Fried Chicken with Ranch Dip appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

*Sorry for the lousy picture. It was taken at 8.30 pm, where there’s no sunlight!

Soup has got to one of the most fail-proof dishes. Really, there is only ONE true component to making tasty soup: time.

You can make a really sweet and savoury soup with just a few basic ingredients. If I’m trying to go meatless, the most basic soup would be ABC soup: corn, carrot, potato and onion. If I really want a rich, full bodied soup, I add pork ribs and honey dates, and boil for at least 2.5 hours over the stove top. You could also cook the soup in your slow cooker for 7 hours.

I used to switch my slow cooker to ‘auto-shift’ at 7.30 in the morning and come home 10 hours later to dinner. I don’t do it now because my 3.2 litre Takahi slow cooker makes hardly enough soup for my family of four, or sometimes six, if Cara and Slimer decide to pop over. ‘3.2 litre’ doesn’t mean it can take 3.2 litres of water hor, it means it has a capacity of 3.2 litres.. you have to factor in the pork ribs, the huge carrot, the corn, the onion, the honey dates… then you’re left with soup for two people.

I cooked this cabbage, pork rib and apple soup over the stove top the other night. I was home early from work and the husband had to work late so I had close to three hours to cook it. Ok technically he didn’t ‘have to’ work late but he always does because he likes to make sure everything is done meticulously. There was this one time that my ex-team mate (who was on night shift) had to whatsapp me at 11 pm saying, “Chris can you get your husband out of the office?” All I can say is, sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t.

Oh if you didn’t know, I met my husband at work but I quit almost two years ago, so we know the same people.

Anyway, I digress. This soup is incredibly easy to make. You don’t have to add the cabbage but I wanted an all-in-one dish that night. All you need: two large fuji apple, a carrot, honey dates, pork ribs, cabbage (optional) and onions. Be sure to simmer the soup gently instead of having it on a rolling boil throughout for the pork ribs to be tender, not tough. The version with snow pear at 老火汤 is said to have cooling properties, nourish the throat, and ‘enhance overall beauty’. Ok so want to be pretty, drink more soup!

The post Pork Rib Apple Soup appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

Soup isn’t quite a big deal in my family when I was growing up. My childhood memory of soup is boiling water with omelette, tang hoon and spring onions, flavoured with soy sauce. That soup is delicious.. but it’s.. boiling water flavoured with soy sauce.

During Chinese New Year, Ah-mm would also cook a big pot of wong-bok vegetable soup with fishballs, meatballs, fuzhou meatballs, handmade meat balls and her-kiao (fish dumplings).. you know, all the teochew stuff. I still cook this soup often these days.. I love the sweetness of the soup when it is loaded with wong-bok, the magic vegetable created – I believe – just so it could be in soup.

For the past 3 weeks, the husband and I have decided to just eat soup for dinner Mondays to Fridays in our attempt to stay in shape, or not stay in round shape anymore. I have also started walking home from work (Boon Lay to Bukit Batok) and reach home about an hour later than usual, so cooking soup makes things easier for me since I basically just have to put everything in a pot and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours over the stove top (we have late dinners). I like this arrangement! You could also cook this in the slow cooker and it’ll be ready by the time you get home from work.

I like to use honey dates as they lend a savoury flavour to the soup. When cooking lotus root and pork rib soup, I also add dried octopus, red dates (sometimes) and peanuts. I cheat and use canned braised peanuts (Narcissus brand) to save time, and also because my aunt can’t eat crunchy peanuts so I have to ensure they are real soft. You could use raw peanuts (remove the skin if you use them!) if you want to be authentic and all, but canned peanuts taste great to me. I also used to add a whole small piece of octopus without cutting, but I find that cutting them into small strips makes the soup tastier. Don’t be tempted to use a large piece of octopus thinking that it would do your soup good. All it’ll do is overpower it.

Before cooking the soup, be sure to clean the pork ribs and scald them in boiling water first. Doing so removes scum, dirt and blood water, so your soup is cleaner and clearer. It also makes the meat juicier. And be sure to simmer instead of boil for the 2 hours so that the meat becomes tender, not tough. You could add carrots, but I didn’t in this recipe.

That night, my little niece came over. She is real picky about food but look at her gulp down the soup! What a gem, this little one! p/s- if you’re giving pork rib soup to children, filter the soup through a sieve first, to get rid of any tiny bones that could exist. Enjoy!

The post Lotus Root Pork Rib Soup appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.