So what is up with the sudden resurrection of blog posts? Well, I am trying to apply for a position to blog for MIT Admissions and I thought it would be a good opportunity to blog for my own sake. As I am transitioning to MIT, I think that writing a blog would be beneficial for me to get my ideas out there and sort out my thoughts. Okay, enough boring stuff, let’s get to the meat of the blog.
So for the application, I am allowed to choose a prompt from Daily Blog Prompts on twitter and write about it. After looking through nearly 2 years of tweets (and realized that there are a TON of reposts and that it was an MIT based twitter account), I decided that I would answer “What’s the most elaborate, complicated meal you’ve ever cooked? Was it awesome, or was it a disaster?”. Obviously, I would choose a topic that I have barely any experience with and completely horrible at. To be honest, I think the majority of meals that I’ve made was just ramen or insta noodles. (The college prep ya know?) But I don’t think that ramen noodles are worthy of a meal to blog about so here goes nothing. I will be walking you through the process in which I made egg drop soup.
Aside from ramen noodles, I think the best meal I’ve cooked is definitely egg drop soup. While some people might say egg drop soup isn’t that difficult to make, I’m here to tell you why it is. You see, making egg drop soup is a very very very extensive and difficult process. First, you have to find some eggs. Most people use chicken eggs, but I guess other kinds of eggs are okay if you are feeling exotic. I’m sure a crocodile egg would make soup as well as a bird egg. Personally, I use two eggs because I’m a big boi. One egg makes the soup a little bit lacking in content while three eggs make it egg soup, not egg drop soup. Perfectly balanced. Just as how everything should be. Next, we must gather the remaining ingredients: salt, cornstarch, water, scallions and chicken broth. If you were capable, you would boil the chicken broth from chicken bones yourself but I am incapable of doing anything past boiling water so I had opted for boxed broth from Costco; it’s actually really good.
Now that you have gathered all the ingredients, go find a pot. Personally, I prefer my pots stainless steel but anything that can boil some soup and waterworks. You could always go full out My Side of the Mountain and use an empty turtle shell like Sam did. (Wow an allusion. I guess AP Lang really did pay off didn’t it). The first step in making egg drop soup is pouring a reasonable amount of chicken broth into the pot; pour as much as you want to make. Give the soup about 5 to 10 minutes for the soup to start boiling. (I did not have to google how long it takes for water to boil. I will have you know. Definitely did not) During that time, you should crack open the eggs (probably crack them by overworking them with psets) and pour the yolk and whites into a bowl. Then get an egg beater or whatever those whisk thingies are called(probably a whisk tbh) to slightly beat the eggs. Don’t beat them too hard, we still want a little bit of the yolk and whites to be separate.
Once the chicken broth is boiling, you should add about \(\frac{1}{2}\) a teaspoon of salt. The chicken broth from Costco that I use already contains a little bit of salt so I just go salt bae on the broth and sprinkle a tiny bit. After you add the salt, make sure to mix well. From what little I still remember from chemistry, stirring is supposed to help? I would suggest using a spoon or chopsticks. Now that your broth has been well seasoned, add 2 tablespoons of cold water and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. Apparently, the cornstarch is supposed to make the soup more viscous and more egg-drop-soupy. The internet is a great place. Make sure to stir the broth so the cornstarch will mix evenly! Believe me, you really don’t want chunky egg drop soup.
Now comes the time to add the egg part of egg drop soup. While stirring, start pouring the slightly beaten egg into the broth. It’s best to pour a bit slowly so you can get long strands of egg as opposed to globs of egg. Remember kids, longer is better. I would make another joke here but I am running out of time to finish this blog so joke will have to come later. [Insert joke here]. <- Just pretend that is a really good joke and laugh. Why am I like this? But yeah, now all you have to do is keep on stirring until the soup thickens a little and becomes clearer.
See guys, that wasn’t that boring of a process to make egg drop soup! In fact, it was filled with peril and excitement. Kek. But what if I told you that I haven’t actually made egg drop soup but am I just copying from a website? Well, that wouldn’t really be true because then I wouldn’t know what a bad egg drop soup tastes like. The first time I tried making egg drop soup, it turned out to be pretty bad of a disaster. I had over salted it (me every day, overly salted that is) and I had a few globs of egg left in the soup. I mean…it was still…you can say…edible. As in the literal meaning of able to be consumed, but I’m not going to say anything about its taste. After reading this blog, I hope that you will also be inspired to make egg drop soup because I certainly have learned a lot by making egg drop soup.