🍽️ Chenpi Green-Bean Soup

Xinhui dried tangerine peel with mung bean.

Chenpi Green-Bean Soup is a representative Cantonese sweet soup of the Jiangmen area, Guangdong, its soul being Xinhui chenpi (dried tangerine peel). Mung beans are simmered until they break down into a sandy paste, cooked together with a piece of aged tangerine peel and sweetened with rock sugar. Aged for years, the peel is mellow and aromatic, blending with the bean's sandy fragrance into a smooth, greenish soup whose sweetness lingers with a citrusy afternote. Green-bean soup is a common Lingnan summer cooler, but Xinhui chenpi makes it extra moist, refreshing and balancing. Xinhui, in Jiangmen, is the home of chenpi, whose locals always add peel to sweets and soups; this bowl makes full use of it. Good hot or cold—especially chilled in summer—it is an easy introduction to Xinhui peel and Cantonese sweet-soup culture.