It’s that time of the year again in Japan: the annoying tsuyu (梅雨) season where Japan basically rains, rains, rains and rains. This week, it gets even more annoying because of the sporadic afternoon showers on an otherwise rain-less day! Anyone else had the experience of bringing an umbrella to school for nought or even buying an umbrella only to have the rain stop?? Regardless of rainfall, it has generally been an unpleasant week of humid and chilly nights.
As a busy college student on a budget far away from home, I often find myself craving for some of my mom’s homemade soups to warm up a rainy day yet I almost always can’t bring myself to cook. I mean, the preparation, the cooking and the cleaning up afterwards simply turn me off. Soups, in particular seem to require many ingredients, seasoning and the time to boil and for a while, I didn’t attempt any soups in my own kitchen.
However, with simple recipes I’ve recently discovered from a friend, I found out that soup can in fact be one of the easiest things to put together! It’s what I call the Throw-In-And-Marvel recipe, basically throw all the ingredients in a pot, bring in to a boil and be amazed!
For this particular recipe, I took advice from a Taiwanese (who love their beef soups) and made an extremely successful 牛筋スープ!
Ingredients (Serves 1-2)
- 200 grams (Or actually just however much you can finish in one sitting) of 牛筋 (Gyuusuji)
- Approximately a quarter to half of an onion
- 1~2 Tomatoes (Depending on how much you like tomatoes)
- Assorted vegetables of your liking (I used mainly carrots and some cabbage and mushrooms for this recipe)
- Salt and pepper
How to?
- Slice the onion into long, thin strips
- Quarter the tomatoes – and be careful not to let the tomato lose too much of its juice in the process
- Peel and cut the carrots into cubes
- Chop the assorted vegetables into smaller pieces
- Chop the gyuusuji up into bite-size pieces or just skip straight to the next step if your gyuusuji was prepackaged as small pieces
- Throw everything into a large pot
- Add water into the pot and make sure the water covers all the ingredients
- Bring the pot to a boil
- Add a generous amount of salt and pepper to season and now it’s ready to be served
Tip: Add in some noodles when the pot’s about the boil and you have delicious beef noodles! (Damn it, it’s time to drop the diet plans!)