Chinese Herbal Soup Recipe | Food, travel, recipe & sights

Recipe : Fresh huái shān/wai san (淮山) soup

I have always wondered what are those dull looking roots sold at the supermarket. So, yesterday when I was at the wet market with this kind vegetable seller, he got me into discovering a new vegetable. He has this box of root vegetable in a box with sawdust (to absorb moisture, I think).

He told me it is fresh wai san and makes a very healthy and good soup. I have used dried wai san in my Chinese herbal soups but never know that fresh ones taste great. The dried ones are tasteless and I usually discard without eating.

The ugly looking piece of root. It is very slimey and hard to hold when wet. I skinned it, slice it into pieces and cook it as a soup with some spareribs and red dates. I learnt that wai san is part of the yam family. You can read more about it from Wiki. Lesson learnt : Skin and cut the wai san first before washing. Otherwise, it is like a piece of eel.

The wai san gives a nice, wholesome taste to the soup. It is good too, without being flour-y (unlike yam) or have that earthy smell like white radish. So, don’t underestimate the goodness of an ugly vegetable! :P

Wai San is going to be my regular purchase from now on.

Posted by lilian on October 30th, 2006 under Food, Recipe

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7 Responses to “Recipe : Fresh huái shān/wai san (淮山) soup”

  1. Chris Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 8:35 pm

    Wow, it looks nice, I never tasted it before….let me try

  2. ling Says:
    October 31st, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Add some tungsum & kei chi as it’s good for lung and eyes. Another vege which makes very good soup is fan kok. Very sweet, just put a small piece in your soup. This 2 types of vege has been in the market for quite a while.

  3. molly Says:
    October 31st, 2006 at 11:35 am

    I read somewhere that Wai san is good for those suffering for gastric trouble. Never cook with fresh one before. Would like to try.. I always put dried wai san, tong sum, kei chee, yuk chuk , pak kei and some red dates in my soup.

  4. Sooi Sooi Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    aikk….y the latest lorbak post kenot komen wan?

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function: related_posts() in /home/lilian88/public_html/penangfaces/wp-content/themes/problogger-clean/single.php on line 46

  5. lilian Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:32 pm

    sooii2 - Wrong timing cos I was upgrading the blog and it was temporary down.

    molly - I must try this next time. In fact, I have some of the herbs in my fridge too. Just lost on what to do with them. Now I know.

    ling - How does fankok looks like? I will ask the vege seller next time. Tks.

    Chris - It is much nicer than white radish and have similar texture like lotus root.

  6. irene Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 4:47 pm

    ya…looks nice lor. Maybe i will try to cook if i saw this wet wai san…

  7. Root vegetables and cooking suggestions | Best recipes, foods and travel Says:
    January 13th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    [...] labelled the above as shan yao. If I remember correctly, this is fresh wai san. It has texture like potato but it tastes bland. So, what I did was to add herbs like red dates, [...]

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