Last year, I wanted to get more into making soups more frequently. They’re nourishing and always satisfying, but I don’t think I got into a decent groove with it until this year. I sourced a place for pork ribs under my nose at the Chinese supermarket I usually go to, and since then, I’ve been looking at more recipes and tinkering with them. The latest soup I made today is Hot Thai Kitchen’s gaeng jued woon sen. In Thai, that literally means “bland curry with glass noodles,” but the only reason it’s called bland is that it’s not spicy at all. It’s meant to be a “wet” component of a Thai meal next to rice and other more spiced / hot dishes. It has a lot in common with Chinese soups I’ve grown up with: it uses pork bones, daikon for sweetness, and has really simple seasonings, such as fish sauce, soy sauce, and white pepper. It’s given more heft with rustic spoon-flicked pork meatballs that are quickly tossed together, different vegetables (I used napa cabbage and “seafood” mushrooms, almost like thicker enoki mushrooms), and even egg (I used egg tofu today). Then, it’s topped with garnishes like cilantro, scallions, and the true flavor bombs: fried crispy garlic chips with its residual garlic oil.

If anyone had this soup and actually thought it was bland, I probably wouldn’t want to associate with them. This is the epitome of Thai home cooking, and in many ways, very similar to comforting, homely Chinese soups I grew up eating, just with a garlicky twist. Variations of this soup will definitely be kept on rotation for us.