This simple and invigorating dish is also known as ABC soup. Unless you grew up in a Chinese household, the name would probably lead you to assume it's alphabet soup of some sort. Instead, it's a nourishing pork rib/chicken soup, together with a variety of vegetables. These can range from potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery and oddly enough, corn.

Serve alongside rice for a scrumptious meal.

So why call it ABC? Some have said this is because it's so effortless to make, like the expression 'as easy as ABC'. A funny one I've heard is that the naming convention was just broken english of the ingredients used. A for 'anion', B for 'botato' and C for carrot. Perhaps even D for 'domato'?! (tomato)

Regardless of the actual reasoning, I'm sure you'll enjoy this mouth-watering soup, at the cost of little to no effort; with ingredients pretty much every kitchen will have. This particular recipe is what my mother taught me, plus a few tiny modifications from myself here and there. Behold the favourite childhood soup of every Chinese Singaporean!

What you'll need:

I used a small skinned chicken, resulting in much less 'scum'.

Core ingredients:

• 1 Whole chicken (cut up)
• 1 Bulb of garlic
• 1 Large yellow onion
• 2-3 Medium sized potatoes
• 2-3 Medium sized carrots
• A good shake of white/black pepper (I went with both)
• Salt to taste

Optional:

• 5-6 Sprigs of thyme

Note: Corn/Tomatoes are withheld as they make the soup sweet, far beyond what I'd prefer. That's not to say those are bad variations of the soup, this is just what I personally enjoy best!

Preparation

If you haven't already, give your chicken a good rinse while we set a pot with 2 litres of water to boil. I used a whole chicken, which includes the feet and bones filled with flavour. While I'd recommend you do the same, you can always get just the seperated chicken parts you enjoy or whatever that's on sale at the supermart.

That's not a pizzahut box from yesterday, your eyes are playing tricks on you.

Then it's time to get our veggies into smaller pieces. Chop up your onions and press the garlic flat with the back of your knife. You can leave the skin on the potatoes if you like, but I peeled them before quartering them and the carrots into nice chunks. Feel free to get them as small as you'd like, some people like them to be bite-sized cubes.

Don't forget to give your garlic another good crush. (not pictured)

Let's cook

Is your water boiling? Great, now just add in every single ingredient at once. No seriously, just empty it all in without a care. Give your soup a good shake of the aforementioned pepper(s), and if you have them: your sprigs of thyme. You should probably tie the thyme up with a string for easier removal later on, but I ahem, forgot.

What about salt you ask? You could also toss in a table spoon or two of salt right now (which I did), but beware: it can be pretty easy to oversalt this. I know my mother only applies it at the end, though I'm not quite sure if it matters. I don't really notice any difference in the final product from the timings I season it up with salt.

Give it a good stir while we bring the mixture to a boil again. As soon as it starts to bubble, turn your heat setting back down to low for a nice gentle simmer. Like any other soup we're slow cooking it, but believe me this won't take long at all. After a few minutes, you should have something that looks like this!

Our onions will turn translucent and pretty much vanish at the end.

You'll notice I don't have much scum/fat on the surface of my soup, as my chicken wasn't too fatty. Yours could be different though, so keep an eye out and skim any access of it to maintain a clear look, preventing your soup from getting too cloudy.

It's very important that we don't boil this too vigorously.

If you like to lounge, relax, or flop...

Get your pot lid on while you find something to do for 30 to 45 minutes. Yes that's correct, this is the ultimum in lazy soup making. Not only are we using the simplest of ingredients, there's no need to wait hungry for several long hours or overnight.

The soup doesn't taste significantly better if we slow cook it for much longer. At the same time, we don't want to cook all the flavour out of the chicken or till it falls apart. I went to go entertain my dog while waiting, but you could always use the time to lie down and try your best to ignore the aroma of the soup (not easy).

Just enough time to bring Max down for a walk.

Time to eat

And just like that, we're done. If you added thyme like I did, don't forget to fish the stems out!

It's 'thyme' to remove these.

Grab a spoon and give it a taste for seasoning, mine had just the right amount of liquid and pepper; but your mileage may vary. If you haven't already salted it, adjust it to your tastes and have a steaming bowl of rice ready!

Ladle yourself a much deserved bowl of piping hot soup, I can guarantee it won't be your only one though. I garnished mine with a few more thyme leaves, though something like crispy fried onions will work as well.

Try not to stuff yourself bloated like I did as a child. Then again, that's probably what my ancestors would have wanted. If you'd like to try this at a Chinese food outlet in your country, I believe it also goes by the name of 'Chinese borscht'.

Thanks for reading my friends, please let me know how it goes if you do try out this recipe.

Enjoy!