Black Chicken with Black Dates Soup

When I was a kid, my mom always double boil black chicken with angelica and black dates. And I was a kid, angelica tasted bitter to me. Well, maybe she used a lot, like one whole root of it, in just a small double boiler. I wonder why, with regular white chicken, it’s always red dates, but when it’s a silkie/black chicken, it’s always black dates. Hmmm… matching skins? Black with black? Uh-huh, I don’t know. I only know it taste good now, cos I used much lesser angelica than my mom.

Angelica is a lady’s herb, so, do not feed to much of this to your man or your pre-puberty kids. You don’t want to mess with their hormones. A bit is fine, as this herb is also used in Bak Kut Te h, the famous pork herbal soup from Klang, but not too much and not too often. And do not consume angelica when you’re pregnant too. That’s all I know.

The soup is very sweet, minimal salt needed to add a salty edge to it. I only used ½ tsp for the whole pot of soup. Without the dang shen, the soup looks clearer, so suit yourself, to use dangshen or not, but it’s really nice with it.

1 Black Chicken/Silkie, mine was about 900gm, dressed weight
80gm black dates
30gm dang shen
3 pieces Angelica Sinensis root, dang guei
1 Tbsp wolfberries
2.5L water

1. Bring water to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, rinse the dangshen and wolfberries. Dangshen may contain dirt. Very lightly rinse angelica.
3. Remove seeds from black dates.
4. When water has come to a rolling boil, put in whole chicken and herbs. Bring back to a boil and lower heat to simmer for 2.5hours.
5. Season with salt and turn off heat. Let the soup sit for half an hour and skim off fat. But more fat will surface once you break up the chicken.