Summer
After a run of chilled summer soups, here's one to reach for when you want something warm — soft chunks of sweet potato in a light, fragrant ginger syrup. Sweet potato and ginger soup (姜汁番薯糖水) is one of the simplest sweet soups in the whole repertoire: three main ingredients,
Summer
Most of the sweet soups on this site ask for a slow simmer and a bit of patience. This one asks for almost nothing. Drop a few dried red dates and a handful of dried longan into hot water, wait a few minutes, and you have a cup that tastes
Summer
Of all the chilled sweet soups of summer, this is the crowd-pleaser — the one that disappears fastest at a gathering. Little chewy tapioca pearls suspended in sweet, creamy coconut, studded with ripe mango, served ice-cold. Mango sago (西米露, xī mǐ lù) hits every note at once: cool, fruity, creamy, and
Sweet Soups
If mung bean soup is the light, cooling side of summer, red bean soup is its cozier cousin — thicker, rounder, a little more comforting. Made from small adzuki beans simmered down with a little rock sugar, hóng dòu tāng is one of the most beloved sweet soups in Chinese homes,
Sweet Soups
When the heat becomes too much, a huge pot of this is what appears on stoves across southern China. Sweet mung bean soup — lǜ dòu tāng — is the original summer cooler: tiny green beans simmered until soft, lightly sweetened, and served ice-cold from the fridge. It's the bowl
Sweet Soups
There's a particular kind of relief that comes from a bowl of something cold and barely sweet on a hot afternoon — not the sugar-rush of ice cream, but something lighter, almost soothing. In Chinese homes, that something is often a bowl of chilled tong sui, and snow fungus