Drink to Beautiful Skin: Bitter Melon Spare Rib Soup

Bitter Melon is also known as a Chinese super-food; my Chinese therapist told me to make this bitter melon spare rib soup to help with my acne break out.  You can google research the health benefit for bitter melon.


Ingredients:
1.5 lbs of spareribs
1/4 cup of dried black-eyed peas
1/4 cup of dried soy bean
2 bittermelon
1 dried sweet date
1 container of firm tofu
2 slices of ginger


Directions:

1) Blanch spareribs

2) Wash and cut bittermelon in halves.  Scratch out the inside of the bittermelon with a spoon.  Then cut bittermelon into cubes

3) Cut firm tofu into cubes, one container makes around 10 cubes

4) Peeled skin off ginger and smash the two slices with a cleaver

5) Wash dried black-eyed peas, dried soy bean, and dried sweetened date

6) Put everything into a pot and put one pitcher of water in it.

7) I used my electronic pressure cooker to make this.  I used the soup function and set it for 45 minutes.

This is my first time making bittermelon soup and it taste better than I expected.  The sweetened date helps the bitterness.  My soup did not have dried soy bean because I don't have any have home.

Sweetened dried date put in soup

Soup is done

My bowl of soup