Chinese Ginseng Chicken Soup

I love this traditional soup and it is so easy to make.  There are only a few ingredients and I always have them in the pantry.  All except for the chicken of course. For the chicken part, I either use one Cornish Hen or 3 drumsticks and one chicken breast, or one chicken breast and a few chicken bones.  I sometimes buy chicken legs and debone it if the boneless chicken is not looking fresh when I am shopping.  So instead of throwing the bones away, I save them for soup or congee.

Ingredients

• 1 Cornish hen
• 10 red dates
• 2 teaspoon of ginseng powder or 4 ginseng roots
• 3 quarts water
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Trim the excess fat on the chicken.
2. Place all ingredients into the stock pot and bring to a boil.
3. When it comes to a boil, turn down the fore to medium low.
4. Skim off the foam that appears on the soup and boil for 2 hours.
5. Add salt to taste.

This soup is usually made with ginseng roots, they can go from few dollar to hundreds of dollar.  I happen to have the really expensive ginseng in powder form, therefore I only need a 2 teaspoons.  If it is the lower grade one, I would need a few ginseng roots for the taste.  You really do not need the expensive stuffs for the soup. I made the mistake of putting a tablespoon of the really expensive ginseng and the whole pot of soup tasted bitterly like ginseng.  I had to add 2 more quarts of water and chicken stock to mellow out the taste of ginseng.  So test out the ginseng before dumping everything into the pot. 

Remember, you can always add but not take out.