🍽️ Huguo Vegetable Soup

Sweet-potato leaf soup, famous Chaozhou vegetarian dish.

Huguo Vegetable Soup is a famous vegetarian dish from Shantou in the Chaoshan region, held in high esteem among Teochew vegetarian cooking. It uses fresh sweet-potato leaves, blanched to remove bitterness, kneaded and chopped into a fine purée, then simmered gently in superior broth and lightly thickened into a green velvet soup, often with straw mushrooms or mushroom dice for savoriness. The broth is green and mellow, the leaves fine as purée, smooth and fragrant, with the rich stock wrapping the vegetable's clean sweetness and no grassy harshness. Teochew cooks pride themselves on making vegetarian dishes taste rich through master stock, and this soup is the example. It avoids meat yet stands out through the leaf's fresh aroma and the broth's craft. At old restaurants in Shantou and Chaozhou it is often served as a banquet vegetarian soup—a classic taste of the clean, fresh essence of Teochew vegetarian food.