Bok Choy Mushroom Noodle Soup

This steaming hot noodle soup with earthy mushrooms and fresh bok choy is a light vegetarian alternative to the usual heavy comfort foods of cold weather cooking. Add noodles and jammy eggs or wontons and serve as a main. Or, omit the extras and serve as an appetizer or soup component of a larger Asian-style multi-dish meal alongside simply-prepared rice, grilled fish and/or vegetables. If prepping ahead, store the soup, noodles and eggs separately.

How to Prepare Asian Greens like Bok Choy for Cooking

Choosing the Right Size Bok Choy

Bok choy can be harvested at any size. The size of bok choy you buy, or harvest, determines how you’ll want to prepare it for cooking to get the best texture in the final dish. 

Growing your own bok choy allows you to choose the size at which you harvest to suit what and how you want to cook with it.

Baby Bok Choy

At about 3-5 inches, these very small baby bok choy can be sliced in half or cooked whole. Leaving them largely intact creates a more aesthetic presentation. I recommend using baby bok choy for this soup, though you can use the small ones instead if you can’t find baby bok choy at your grocery store. 

Small Bok Choy

Medium-sized bok choy are closer to 6-8 inches and should be cut lengthwise through the root either in half or in quarters before cooking. You can either leave these pieces whole or cut them in half again crosswise if you don’t want to be biting into long cooked greens.

Large Bok Choy

Full-sized bok choy are around 10-12 or more inches. They’re comparable to the size of other large bunches of greens like chard or kale. These should be cut into small pieces to avoid unevenly cooked stems and enormous cooked leaves in the finished dish. Chopped greens won’t be as pretty but may be more pleasant to eat. 

Cleaning Bok Choy

If you’re looking for more ways to use greens, try these quick sautéed collard greens.

There is more than one way to clean Asian greens and the method you choose depends on how big your bok choy is, how dirty they are and how you plan to cook them. 

• Sometimes packaged baby bok choy has already been cleaned. Pull apart some of the layers of the bok choy and check the crevices close to the core for dirt. If they look clean you can skip the cleaning step or quickly soak or run them under some cold water. 
• If you are only cooking a few small or large bok choy that will be halved or quartered and are relatively dirt-free, I find it easiest to wash them whole by pulling apart the leaves, while leaving the core intact, and running each one under cold water.
• If your bok choy is very large and you plan to chop it before cooking or it needs a thorough cleaning, I find it easier to cut it into small pieces before cleaning it. Once your bok choy is chopped, use a salad spinner to rinse away the dirt, changing the water a few times, then leave it to dry.

Cutting Bok Choy

If you’re cutting larger bok choy into small pieces before cooking:

1. Separate the fibrous white parts of the choy from the leafy green parts by cutting each head of bok choy in half crosswise. 
2. Slice the white stem parts crosswise into ½ inch segments. 
3. Then, roll up the leafy parts and cut crosswise into ½ inch ribbons. 
4. Give the ribbons a 90 degree turn and slice again into ½ inch segments. 
5. Clean the greens by soaking and rinsing them in a salad spinner.
6. If you have time, arrange the chopped choy in a single layer on a towel-lined baking sheet to dry, keeping the stem and leaf parts separate, while you prepare the rest of the ingredients for the soup. 

Preparing Scallions

The green and white parts of a scallion have different levels of onion-flavor intensity. The white parts are strongly flavored and are generally better to eat once cooked down and used as an aromatic whereas the green parts are milder and can either be left raw to use as a fresh topping or cooked down with the white parts - though they won’t take as long to cook. 

For this reason, divide the scallions into two parts that serve different purposes. Cut off the root. Separate the larger white parts of the scallions from the green parts by cutting them crosswise. Then slice the white and green parts into ¼ inch slices, storing them separately in your mise en place. 

Bulk up your Soup

For more soup-season recipes, try this creamy salmon soup, or this chicken tomatillo soup.

Jammy Eggs

Jammy eggs are a great way to add protein to this and other brothy soups if you want a soup that fills you up more and feeds more people. Simply boil your eggs for between 6.5 and 7.5 minutes to get the perfect not quite runny but also not dry yolk.

Noodles

You can use any noodle of your choice for this soup. I like to use either ramen noodles, Chinese wheat noodles or soba, but you could also use something like udon or vermicelli. I don’t recommend rice noodles because they tend to get mushy really fast, but that’s just my personal preference. 

One thing I do recommend is to cook and store whatever noodles you choose separately from the rest of the soup ingredients. Cooking the noodles in the soup saves a few minutes but noodles are finicky and quickly go from underdone to perfect to overcooked. And when noodles sit in broth they gradually absorb the liquid of the broth, which both reduces the amount of soup and turns the texture of the noodles to mush. 

Dumplings

Soups are a great use of frozen dumplings, whether homemade or store-bought. Wontons or soup dumplings are obvious choices for adding to soups, but you can use whatever dumplings you like.

You can add the cooked dumplings directly to the soup as you serve, or, if you prefer a dumpling with a crisp bottom, fry them for a few minutes. If doing this, serve the dumplings on the side of the soup, rather than submerging them in the broth, to maintain the texture of the bottoms.

I like to make my own freezer dumplings of various kinds - like these vegetarian Tibetan momos. It’s a great kitchen project for using up garden produce or emptying out the vegetable crisper. But if you have access to a decent sized grocery store or, even better, a small Asian grocer, there are a ton of pre-made frozen dumplings out there that will do the trick.  

Keep the Soup Light

Another option for this bok choy soup is to keep it simple. Omit the noodles or eggs and serve it as a light lunch, or the starter or soup component of a multi-dish meal as you might serve a miso soup. 

Alongside the soup you could serve steamed rice, simply-prepared grilled or steamed fish and a few easy vegetable dishes. A few recipes that would work well for this sort of meal include: 

• Cantonese steamed fish
• Quick sauteed greens 
• Chinese-style steamed zucchini 
• Korean cucumber salad
• Honey sriracha brussels sprouts

Make it Spicy

This recipe makes a mild soup, but there are lots of ways you could doctor it up to make it spicy. If you want the soup really spicy without adding extra flavors, I find the best way is to mince a hot pepper or two and add it to the soup with the other aromatics. Match the pepper you use with the spice level you want. Jalapenos are good for milder spice and something like habaneros or ghost peppers are good if you like a more fiery spice level. 

But the easiest way to up the spice level of this or any other soup is to add a spicy condiment when serving. You could use: 

• ‍Chili oil. I like to make my own using this easy recipe, but you can find store-bought versions. ‍
• Chili Crisp. Like a chili oil but with a higher ratio of crispy bits to oil, store-bought chili crisps are easy to find in the international section of any supermarket. 
• A simple hot sauce. For this soup, choose something with an Asian flavor profile, like Sriracha, rather than something from a different category of cuisines, like cholula.

To keep the recipe flexible for different tastes, make the soup itself mild and serve spicy condiments at the table for each diner to help themselves. 

Make-Ahead Options, Leftovers & Storage

Whether you want to get a head start on dinner or you are meal prepping a batch of soup for the week’s lunches, you can prepare each element of this soup in-advance. But, if you’re not eating all of the soup right away, you’ll need to treat each component differently. 

• ‍Eggs. Jammy or hard-boiled eggs can be made up to 5 days in advance. Store them separately in an airtight container in the refrigerator.‍
• Noodles. Noodles can be made a day or two in advance, but for the best texture it’s ideal to only cook the amount of noodles you expect to be eaten that day. If you do make noodles in advance, be sure to store them separately from the soup broth or they will absorb the liquid over time and become mushy.‍
• Dumplings or wontons. If you intend to serve this soup with dumplings, I recommend either using store bought fresh or frozen dumplings or making your own dumplings from scratch well in advance and freezing them. Don’t try to be a hero and make the dumplings the same day you make the soup!‍
• Soup/broth. Store in the refrigerator for 3-5 days. If you want to freeze the soup, it will keep frozen for 3-6 months. Do not freeze with the noodles or eggs, but rather wait to make the noodles and eggs when you are ready to eat the soup. To serve from frozen, defrost the soup overnight in the refrigerator or add the frozen soup directly to a pot to melt and heat up on the stove before serving.