A super fast and easy napa cabbage tofu soup with mushrooms simmered in chicken broth for a comforting and hearty taste. It is a great side dish to add to your dinner table for extra color and nutrition. {Gluten-Free Adaptable}
Growing up in China, soup was one of the key components of dinner and my mom served it almost every day. For busy weeknights, she’d usually make easy soups that take very little time to put together. For example, egg drop soup, tomato egg drop soup, corn soup, and winter melon meatball soup were some of her go-to recipes.
One of my favorite soups of hers is napa cabbage tofu soup. It takes no time to put together and it tastes super hearty. In the recipe below I’ve included a few different ways for you to tweak this soup using the ingredients you have on hand.
Napa cabbage tofu ingredients
Broth base
Napa cabbage tofu soup uses a chicken broth base and aromatics to create a hearty taste. Since the ingredients in this recipe are extremely simple, it is important to use a high quality chicken broth or bouillon. My personal favorite broth is Kirkland Signature Organic Chicken Broth, which you can find at Costco. My other favorite is Better Than Bouillon Roast Chicken Base. You simply need to add a big spoonful of the paste into water to create a very flavorful broth.
Other delicious way to spice up your broth
Dried shrimp – It’s one of my mom’s favorite ways to add flavor to a soup. To use dried shrimp, soak a few of them in warm water for 10 minutes, then add them to the soup at the beginning. It will infuse a savory seafood flavor to the soup.
Miso Paste – If you have miso paste, you can also add a spoonful of it to the chicken base and skip the salt. It adds a rich umami to the soup, and not to mention, it has a ton of nutritional benefits.
Chicken bouillon powder – If the chicken broth you use is not flavorful enough for your liking, I would add a small amount of chicken bouillon to further enhance the taste.
Vegetable and alternatives
My favorite vegetables are napa cabbage and mushrooms. Both create a great texture in the soup. However, there are many other vegetables that work in this recipe as well. Here are some of my favorite:
- Choy sum
- Baby bok choy
- Bamboo shoots
- Regular cabbage
- Kale
- Celtuce
- Spinach (add it at the end)
Options for tofu
The recipe below uses soft tofu, which is very quick to cook and has a nice silky texture. You can replace it with firm or medium tofu if you like.
Instead of regular tofu, I also love to use other types of tofu products such as:
- Fried tofu puffs
- Yuba sheet (cut to strips, add at the end)
- Yuba knots (add at the beginning of cooking)
- Yuba Sticks (add at the beginning of cooking)
These tofu products have a fun texture and they absorb flavor better than regular tofu. If you happen to have them on hand, you can use them instead of regular tofu.
Mise en place
When you’re ready to cook, you should have:
- Sliced green onion
- Chicken broth
- Mushrooms, prepped
- Sliced napa cabbage, white and green parts separated
- Sliced ginger
- Smashed garlic
- Tofu, sliced
- Soy sauce, white pepper, chicken bouillon (or salt)
- Sesame oil
How to cook napa cabbage tofu soup
It is super easy to cook napa cabbage tofu soup:
- Bring the broth to a boil with ginger, garlic, and soy sauce
- Add the white part of the napa cabbage and the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes
- Cook the napa cabbage greens and tofu
- Add the rest of the seasoning and finish up with green onion and a drizzle of sesame oil
That’s it!
The napa cabbage is tender and soaked in the hearty chicken broth. The broth is infused with a fragrant gingery taste and mildly spicy taste from the white pepper. It is a great, easy side dish to serve for dinner during the cold winter months.
Other dishes to serve with napa cabbage tofu soup
- Rice Cake Stir Fry (炒年糕, Chao Nian Gao)
- Jing Jiang Rou Si (Peking Shredded Pork, 京酱肉丝)
- Chicken Chow Mein (鸡肉炒面)
- Tomato And Egg Stir Fry (西红柿炒鸡蛋)
- Yang Zhou Fried Rice (扬州炒饭)
- Air Fryer Chinese Chicken Wings
Napa Cabbage Tofu Soup (白菜豆腐汤)
Ingredients
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 4 slices ginger
- 2 green onions , sliced
- 2 cloves garlic , smashed
- 2 teaspoons light soy sauce
- 8 napa cabbage leaves , sliced to bite-size pieces (yield 8 cups after cutting)
- 5 oz (140 g) mushrooms of your choice , sliced to bite-size pieces (Optional) (*Footnote 1)
- 1/2 block soft tofu , sliced to bite-size pieces (*Footnote 2)
- 1/2 teaspoon chicken bouillon powder (or salt to taste)
- 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
Instructions
- Heat the chicken broth in a medium-size pot over medium-high heat. Add the ginger, green onion, garlic and light soy sauce.
- When the broth starts to boil, add the white part of the napa cabbage and mushrooms (if using enoki mushrooms, add them later). Cook for 4 minutes, until the white part of the cabbage starts to soften.
- Add the green part of the napa cabbage and tofu and continue cooking for another 2 to 3 minutes. If you are using enoki mushrooms, add them now.
- Add the chicken bouillon powder (or salt), white pepper, and drizzle with sesame oil. Adjust seasoning by adding more salt if needed. Serve hot.
Notes
- Many types of mushrooms work well in this soup. My favorites include oyster mushrooms, golden needle mushrooms (enoki), beech mushrooms (shimeji mushrooms) and regular white or brown mushrooms.
- You can use firm or medium tofu as well. If using these types of tofu, add them during step 2, at the same time you add the napa cabbage whites.
This was easy and super tasty! My white pepper was very strong, so next time I might reduce it a bit. Otherwise, a perfect recipe.
I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the soup! Yeah I did put quite a lot of white pepper in it, and it can taste a bit spicy, which I like. Also, when the white pepper stays in the soup for a little longer, the flavor will become a bit milder.
That being said, halving the white pepper sounds good to me! Thanks for leaving a positive review 🙂
What a great recipe. So tasty! Thank you so much!
So happy to hear you tried this one and enjoyed it! And thanks for leaving a positive review 🙂
Made this to accompany tangculiji and jiankangzhengshucai. It was perfect on a cold January day. Just a drop of sesame oil made it sing.
A possibly silly question — when you mention using yuba in place of soft tofu, would you add dried yuba sticks (which is what I’ve got in the pantry) directly into the soup at the beginning, or soak them first to soften before starting to cook? Thanks! This looks lovely!
For dried yuba sticks, I would soak it first (cold water overnight, or warm water for a couple of hours). And I would add them to the soup at the very beginning, because the dried type is usually quite thick and takes longer time to cook.
Thanks, Maggie! I did soak it first and it worked out nicely, and added them at the beginning of the process. The soup is delicious!
Happy to hear it worked out well 🙂
My 3 yr old love it a lot!!!! Thank you so much!!!
When to add the green onions?
Add the green onion with the ginger and garlic. Sorry for the confusion! I just updated the recipe to reflect it.
Made this one two nights ago and it was great. In step 1 I did heat the aromatics low and slow (30 min) the resulting broth was great as was the entire soup. Will do this one again. Thank you Chef.
This soup is so delicious! The broth is so flavorful and all the ingredients cooked perfectly- the proportions of all the ingredients are spot on. Also was super fast!
I was really looking for ideas to use up left over cabbage, and this was a very tasty soup. The only tweaks I made was add a tbsp of miso paste to the broth base, and used smoked firm tofu, both added a very deep umami and smokey flavour to the soup.
We love to add miso paste to our soup too! It has a nice flavor plus it’s so healthy. Glad to hear you enjoyed the dish and thanks for leaving a nice review 🙂
Do you think this recipe would work with the soaking liquid from shiitakes in place of the chicken broth? 2 members of my family don’t eat meat so I need to adapt a lot of recipes!
I wouldn’t use shiitake soaking water by itself because the flavor is quite strong and does not taste that good.
To replace the chicken broth, I prefer miso paste or better than bouillon vegetable base.
The other way to make very simple vegetarian soup base is to use mushroom powder (like the one by Lee Kum Kee). It is made with mushrooms but more balanced and tastier than shiitake soaking water.
Very good! Added a little sake and seaweed. Worked well!
DELICIOUS!!! I doubled the recipe and threw in a turmeric root, I used a yellow onion in the broth instead of the green onion, shiitake mushrooms, threw in 3 dried shrimp, added a block of silken tofu (whole as I didn’t want it to fall apart & get lost in the soup) & added a heaping teaspoon of miso paste along with a heaping teaspoon of better than chicken bouillon at the end!
So so tasty!! 🥰