Nanjing Duck Blood Vermicelli Soup
“Nanjing's defining street breakfast — sweet-potato vermicelli, duck-blood cubes, and duck giblets in a clear duck-bone broth.”
The bite
Clear amber broth, smelling of duck fat and a back-note of citrus from the chenpi. The vermicelli is slippery and grabs onto the broth; duck-blood cubes are silken, almost like firm tofu but with iron at the edges; the giblets each give a different chew — gizzard taut, liver soft, intestine springy. A squirt of ginger juice goes in last for sharpness. If the broth is murky, the cook didn't skim.
Where it comes from
Nanjing has eaten duck since the Six Dynasties era (3rd-6th century), and Ming-dynasty Nanjing was already nicknamed the Duck Capital. The vermicelli soup specifically emerged in late-Qing street stalls (late 1800s) as a way to use up the giblets and blood that the city's salt-water duck shops produced as by-products. Today there are reportedly more than 5,000 specialty shops in Nanjing alone.
What makes it work
Duck blood is mostly water, hemoglobin, and protein; brief alkaline-salt blanching cross-links the proteins enough to firm the texture but stops short of the rubbery state you get from overcooking. The clear broth philosophy is structural: any milky emulsification (from hard-boiling) would mask the iron note of the blood and the chenpi citrus aroma, both of which are the dish's identity.
On the Palate
Ingredients
Serves 3
How it's made
5 steps · Show ↓20 min active · 120 min waiting
How it's made
5 steps · Show ↓- 1120 min
Simmer one duck carcass plus a duck head and two duck feet in 2.5L water for 2 hours with ginger and a small piece of dried tangerine peel. Skim diligently — Nanjing broth is meant to stay clear, not milky like Hunan's. Salt only at the end.
- 240 min
Clean duck giblets — gizzard, liver, heart, intestine. Boil gizzard and heart for 25 minutes with star anise and scallion until tender. Slice. Liver gets a separate 8-minute poach off-boil so it stays pink. Intestine is rinsed with flour-salt and boiled 40 minutes; slice into rings.
- 33 min
Cut duck blood (sold as a firm jelly block) into 2cm cubes. Blanch in lightly salted water for 1 minute — this firms it and removes the metallic edge. Drain.
- 417 min
Soak 100g sweet-potato vermicelli in warm water for 15 minutes until pliable. Boil 2 minutes, drain into deep bowls. The vermicelli should be slippery, almost translucent.
- 52 min
Reheat the strained duck broth. Place giblets and duck-blood cubes on top of the vermicelli. Pour boiling broth over — it should fill the bowl almost to the rim. Top with chopped cilantro, a teaspoon of fresh ginger juice, fried tofu skin, and a few drops of white pepper oil. Hot chili paste on the side.
