Peanut Soup with Spareribs

Winter has finally arrived!

There is still no snow, but the temperature has started to go below zero degrees Celsius at night. It's nice to stay indoors, especially so when you have a bowl of steaming soup for dinner.

Peanut Soup with Spareribs

1/2 cup Small dried scallops (Can reduce to 1/4 cup)

2 cups Peanuts (Can reduce to 1-1.5 cups)

1.2 lbs Spareribs

1.4 litres Water

• Remove excess fats from the spareribs and clean them.
• Blanch the spareribs in a pot of boiling water.
• Remove the spareribs and rinse them under cold water.
• Set aside for use later.
• Fill a big pot with 1.4 litres of water.
• Rinse the dried scallops and leave them in the pot of water to soak.
• Rinse the peanuts and put them into the pot.
• Put the blanched spareribs into the pot.
• Bring the pot of water to a boil.
• Lower the heat and let it simmer.
• Cook for about 2 hours, or more if you like the peanuts to be softer.

The peanuts were crunchy, but not hard. The meat was tender and sweet, and darling KW loved eating the shredded pieces (I shredded the huge pieces after the soup was done) of pork soaked in the soup.

I think I put a little too much dried scallops, as the soup was really sweet! The next time I cook it, I will try with just 1/4 cup instead of 1/2 cup of dried scallops. Hope it doesn't affect the sweetness of the soup. I could have added more water into the pot with that 1/2 cup of scallops, but my pot was really small! Any more water and the water would boil over ... while boiling soup, the most important thing to note is that do not attempt to add more water while the soup is cooking. It will affect the taste of the soup, and dilute the sweetness. If you want more water, do it before you start cooking. As for the dried scallops, I read from some food blogs that they use dried cuttlefish (can be found in most Asian Grocery stores) instead of scallops. But since I had some scallops at hand, I need not purchase any cuttlefish. The fact is, I don't reallly like the taste and smell of it =p Well, I guess I will give it a try when I finish my supply of dried scallops.