Print

Glass Noodle Soup

bowl of glass noodle soup with mushrooms
Print Recipe

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

5 from 4 reviews

Easy, fast and flavorful glass noodle soup, made in a delicious garlic and ginger broth with soy sauce. Long, clear glass noodles are so fun to eat! 

This is a vegetarian recipe, however, this soup is also really good with chicken. You can add cooked, shredded chicken to this recipe before serving the soup. Or, cook raw chicken in the soup pot. You can even add ground meat. See the notes below the recipe for instructions. 

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 2 tablespoons canola oil or toasted sesame oil
  • 2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped or thinly sliced
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger (or less, if you prefer)
  • 8 to 10 ounces mushrooms, thinly sliced (use your favorite type of mushroom)
  • 4 cups/1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
  • 4 cups water
  • 1/3 cup reduced sodium soy sauce
  • 4 ounces* glass noodles (also called cellophane noodles)
  • 3 to 4 handfuls fresh baby spinach
  • Green onions, for garnish

Instructions

  1. Warm the oil in a wide soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. 
  2. Add the garlic and ginger. Saute for 1 minute. 
  3. Add the mushrooms. Saute until soft, about 5 minutes.
  4. Add broth, water and soy sauce. Once the broth reaches a simmer, cover with a lid and simmer for 5 minutes. 
  5. Add the noodles and baby spinach. Simmer for just a minute to soften the spinach, then turn off the heat and put the lid back on the pot. Stir occasionally, until the noodles are clear. 
  6. By the time you bring the soup to the table, the noodles should be fully cooked. You’ll know because they’ll be completely clear instead of white. The noodles are quite long, so you might want to snip the length with kitchen shears for easier slurping. 
  7. Serve with chopped green onion. Add more soy sauce to taste if needed. 

Notes

The flavor of the broth really matters in this simple soup, so make sure to buy a brand that tastes good (and don't buy low-sodium broth, it won't taste as good).

For this recipe, you can use glass noodles made from either mung bean starch or sweet potato starch.

Packages of glass noodles usually contain small bundles of dried noodles. You can figure out the weight of each bundle by dividing the total weight of the package by how many small bundles are inside. In the photo of dried glass noodles in the blog post above, each of the bundles weighed 2 ounces. 

Glass noodles soak up broth like crazy. Adding more than 4 ounces of dried glass noodles will fill your pot with noodles and almost no broth. 

Add Chicken

Chicken thighs: Add 4 raw chicken thighs to the soup pot after adding the water, broth and soy sauce. Simmer the chicken until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Remove the chicken and shred the meat, then return the shredded chicken to the pot. 

Cooked chicken: Shred leftover, cooked chicken and add it to the soup before adding the noodles. 

Add Ground Meat

Any type of ground meat can be added to this soup, but ground pork or chicken are especially good. Add the uncooked ground meat to the pot as the very first step. Once it is mostly cooked, then add the garlic and ginger and proceed with the recipe. 

Storage

This soup tastes best if eaten within 3 days. If leftover glass noodle soup is stored in the refrigerator, the noodles will soak up most of the broth. The noodles are still delicious, but you'll have to add more broth to turn the leftovers back into soup.

Find it online: https://www.kitchenskip.com/easy-flavorful-glass-noodle-soup/