Home ❯ Recipes ❯ Soups & Stocks ❯ Tofu Soup

Tofu Soup

Name: Tofu Soup (An Easy Chinese Recipe!)
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 45 min
Ingredients: 4 cups chicken stock ((or vegetable stock)); 3 cups water; 2 tablespoons neutral oil ((such as canola, vegetable, or avocado oil)); 3 large eggs; 1 pound soft tofu or silken tofu ((1 block, cut into ½-inch/1.25cm) cubes)); 3 ounces fresh mushrooms ((such as button, cremini, beech, oyster, or shiitake, sliced or torn into bite-size pieces)); 12 ounces napa cabbage ((leaves separated and sliced into ¾-inch/2cm pieces)); 1 teaspoon sesame oil; Salt ((to taste)); ½ teaspoon white pepper; ¼ cup chopped cilantro leaves ((and/or scallions))

by:

Judy

29 Comments

Jump to Recipe

Updated: 4/16/2025

This simple tofu soup recipe gets sweetness from napa cabbage and richness from a few eggs. It is deliciously warm and comforting, and incredibly easy to make.

With just 11 ingredients—most of which you probably already have in your kitchen (stock, water, white pepper, sesame oil, salt), you can make a tasty tofu soup that’s actually both flavorful and filling!

Tofu & Napa Cabbage: A Winter Pairing

Napa cabbage and tofu are a great duo in Chinese cuisine, as they are often showcased together in winter meals. These two ingredients bring out the best in each other.

Napa cabbage is a hardy vegetable that can survive throughout winter. Moreover, its natural sweetness intensifies in the colder months. (Hardy vegetables develop sugars to resist frost.)

You can try it in some of our other napa cabbage recipes, like our Sichuan Napa Cabbage, Rice Cakes with Napa Cabbage & Pork, and Pork Cabbage Potstickers.

For this soup, I like to cook the cabbage for a long time. The longer it cooks, the more flavorful it gets.

Tofu is another year-round staple. Admittedly, using the two of them in soups is nothing new. (See our Fish Tofu Soup). But the combination just works. The soft tofu and tender napa leaves are a great textural pairing as well.

More supermarkets are carrying napa cabbage these days, so this nourishing soup can be yours in a flash! If you have leftovers, all the better. This soup, like many others, tastes better the next day.

Fried Eggs in Soup?

Perhaps the most exciting technique in this soup is that of adding fried eggs to it. This is an idea that I have seen in several recipes on the Chinese internet.

Adding eggs to soup is very common in Chinese cooking, but those eggs are usually added while still raw, as in Egg Drop Soup, Hot & Sour Soup, Tomato Egg Noodle Soup, West Lake Soup (recipe in our cookbook!), or banquet-style seafood soups.

Adding them after frying them in a wok or pan first, however, keeps the soup brothy rather than thick, and also gives you bigger chunks of egg in the soup, similar to chunks of meat or seafood. The result is hearty and satisfying—and easy!

Another Secret:

Another key step in this soup? Keeping it at a rapid boil for 10 minutes, to achieve a milky broth, similar to a ramen broth!

While there are many tofu soups out there, we hope you enjoy this version.

Make this soup vegetarian

This recipe can easily be made vegetarian simply by substituting our Asian Vegetable Stock—or your preferred vegetable stock—for the chicken stock.

Tofu Soup Recipe Instructions

In a pot, bring the chicken stock and water to a boil. Once boiling, cover, and lower the heat to keep it simmering.

Meanwhile, place a medium soup pot or wok over medium-high heat until it’s hot enough that a small splash of water beads and dances along the cooking surface. (See our post on how to prevent sticking).

Once hot, add the oil to coat the bottom of the pot. Crack the eggs into the pot, and cook over medium-high heat until the eggs are browned around the edges (it is important to brown the egg well).

eggs frying in pot — **Note that the original recipe had 4 eggs, as pictured above, but after some internal discussion decided that 3 eggs is better!**

Flip the eggs over and do the same to the other side, making sure the eggs are cooked through completely. (Runny yolk will cloud the soup.)

Transfer the fried eggs onto a cutting board and cut into bite-size pieces. Return the egg pieces to the pot.

Increase the heat to high, and pour in the simmering stock/water, along with tofu and mushrooms (We used beech mushrooms, AKA bunashimeji mushrooms, but you can use oyster, button, cremini, shiitake—whatever mushroom you have on hand).

Cover and boil for 10 minutes over high heat. This will give the soup a rich milky appearance, similar to ramen broth:

Next, add the napa cabbage.

Cover and cook for another 5-10 minutes, or until the cabbage is very tender. Add the sesame oil, salt to taste, and white pepper.

Top with cilantro and/or scallion.

Serve!

Tofu Soup with napa cabbage, mushrooms, and eggs

About

Judy

Judy Leung is the matriarch of The Woks of Life family, working on the blog alongside husband Bill and daughters Sarah and Kaitlin. Born in Shanghai, China, she immigrated to the United States at sixteen. Fluent in both English and three Chinese dialects, she also plays the important role of researcher and menu translator! Drawing from over four decades of cooking experience and travel, Judy aims to bring Chinese culinary traditions to readers and preserve recipes that might otherwise be lost to time. Her expertise spans from Shanghainese cooking and everyday homestyle dishes to a variety of regional foodways, showcasing the depth and breadth of Chinese cuisine for a global audience. Over the last decade, she’s helped transform The Woks of Life into what Saveur Magazine has deemed “the internet’s most popular Chinese cooking blog,” co-written a New York Times bestselling cookbook, and become convinced that we will never run out of recipes to share!