Asian flavour inspired soup with dumplings

This weeks soup was inspired by these yummy little dumplings I picked up at Costco.  

I'm sure you could find something similar at your local grocer. 

I first sautéed chopped onion, celery and garlic together with olive oil. 

I added in diagonally sliced carrots

I peeled my frozen ginger and once it had thawed slightly I was able to slice it thinly.    I usually keep my ginger in the freezer, this way I always have it on hand!  

Now for the seasoning:  I added a package of onion soup mix, low sodium chicken stock (you could use vegetable stock to keep this vegetarian), 18 cups of water, hoisin sauce, soya sauce, sesame oil and a touch of sambal hot sauce.

All of these flavour ingredients were added to taste and to my specific  preference.  This can seem intimidating but if you taste as you go you can figure out what tastes good to you!

I added in two canned of baby corn, chopped bok choy and Chinese baby greens.  

This pot gave me 8-1litre jars.

This soup could be eaten just like this or you could add a rice noodle or dumpling.  

I decided to put 8 frozen mini dumplings into a bowl and top with soup.  I heated this in the microwave but I think next time this would be better done on the stove top; it would reheat more evenly.

This was really nice; exactly what I wanted.  Sliced chicken would of been nice or even some poached shrimp instead of the chicken dumplings.  Leaving it vegetarian gives you the option of deciding later what to add to it.  You can eat it differently every time!  I'm excited to share this weeks soup.