Asparagus Crab Soup ? Also Known As Vietnamese Sup Mang Cua

A couple of months ago, I asked my friends at Ravenous Couple to teach me how to make Asparagus Crab Soup, and they graciously invited us over to their house for a personal cooking lesson! It was lot of fun and I can’t believe how easy and simple it is to make! All this time I thought it took hours to prepare, but really, it’s much faster and easier than you’d think (that is, if you use already prepared crab meat and broth. Good luck extracting fresh crab meat from several crabs!).

Asparagus Crab Soup is most well known at Chinese-Vietnamese restaurants and mainly served at wedding banquets. It’s a wonderful soup consisting of chicken or pork broth, crab meat, white asparagus, eggs, and whole quail eggs. The consistency of this soup is usually thick, which is why we use a lot of corn starch.

Kim & Hong from Ravenous Couple whips up amazing Vietnamese dishes from family recipes. My goal is to try to cook more traditional Vietnamese meals to broaden my versatility in the kitchen – especially since it’s food I grew up eating! Thanks for teaching me how to make this – I have already made it twice!

Here is the link to their blog post and recipe that I used: Sup Mang Cua Vietnamese Asparagus Crab Soup

The essential canned items I used to make this a pain-free experience are: whole peeled white asparagus, king crab meat, and cooked quail eggs. (This picture is so crooked, haha)

In a large pot, bring 12 cups of chicken stock or pork broth to a boil. Then combine the white asparagus (cut into 2-inch pieces), crab meat, and quail eggs to the soup.

In a separate bowl, lightly beat 2 eggs and slowly add it to the soup while on low heat. Swirl it around until you see the egg solidify - it will be just like egg drop soup.

To get the thick consistency, dissolve 3 tbsp of cornstarch in 1 cup of warm water in a bowl and slowly add it a little bit at a time and continue swirling. This will eventually thicken the soup. Depending on how thick you like it, keep adding more corn starch. Finally, season with 2 tbsp of fish sauce, 1 tsp salt, and a pinch of sugar. Taste and add more until desired.

To complete this bowl of soup, sprinkle some ground white pepper, green onion, and cilantro. Then, simply enjoy.