Sweet Potato Soup (Fan Shu Tang)
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Total time: 25 minutes
Servings: 2
Country of Origin
China (Southern Region / Cantonese Style)
Description
A rustic, comforting dessert soup built on a handful of humble ingredients. Chunks of sweet potato are simmered in a watery broth sweetened with unrefined dark brown sugar and infused with crushed ginger, yielding a sweet, warming liquid that clears the palate.
Presentation & How It's Eaten
Served hot in small bowls at the conclusion of a family dinner, especially during cold autumn or winter evenings.
Ingredients
1 large orange or yellow sweet potato (approx. 300g, peeled and cut into bite-sized chunks)
50g Chinese brown sugar slab (Pian Tang) or dark brown sugar
3 inches fresh ginger root (washed, unpeeled, and thoroughly smashed with a cleaver)
3.5 cups water
Step-by-Step Directions
Prep Sweet Potatoes: Peel the sweet potato and cut it into jagged, rustic bite-sized chunks using angled roll-cuts. Rinse the chunks under cold water to wash away surface starches.
Boil Aromatics: Bring 3.5 cups of water and your smashed ginger root to a rolling boil in a pot. Let it boil alone for 5 minutes to release the ginger oils into the liquid.
Simmer Potatoes: Drop the sweet potato chunks into the boiling water. Lower the heat to a medium-low simmer, cover with a lid, and cook for 12 to 15 minutes until the sweet potatoes are tender enough to be easily pierced with a chopstick.
Sweeten: Add the dark brown sugar slab to the pot. Stir gently for 2 to 3 minutes until the sugar dissolves completely into the amber broth.
Serve: Ladle the hot soup along with several chunks of sweet potato into bowls, leaving the ginger pieces behind in the pot.
Cooking Tips
Smash the Ginger: Don't slice the ginger cleanly for this recipe. Take the flat side of a Chinese chef's knife or a heavy skillet and smash the ginger root violently against your cutting board. Cracking and tearing the fibrous structure allows the ginger juices to bleed freely into the broth, giving it a distinctive, spicy throat-warming quality.
Nutrition Facts
(Estimated per serving)
Calories: ~180 kcal
Total Fat: 0.1g
Saturated Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 25mg
Total Carbohydrates: 44g
Dietary Fiber: 3.5g
Protein: 1.5g
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