I love snap peas, shelling peas, and snow peas but honestly, I love pea tips even more. Harvested from the tenderest ends of the edible pea plant, the leafy greens are delicate in texture after a brief cooking. Pea tips offer a grassy pea-ness that's earthy and alluring. They are tender like spinach but don't leave the same astringency on your teeth. Pea tips are typically sold at Chinese markets.

I used to refer to pea tips as dou miao (pea shoots) but that can be confused with vermicelli-thin slender pea sprouts, which are called xiao (small) dou miao in Mandarin. It's more accurate to describe the more substantial pea tips as da (big) dou miao or wan (late) dou miao because the greens come from mature plants. That said, you'll likely hear them called dou miao (Mandarin) or dou miu (Cantonese) at many places. At restaurants, I always make sure to order the bigger/older pea tips -- which tends to be a spendy dish on menus.

In the past, I've followed convention and stir fried the pea tips with broth and garlic, as I did in this recipe. My husband and I can gobble up a plate of pea tips that would otherwise serve four average diners, so the precious vegetable would disappear fast in our house and on our table. Pea tips are pricey ($4 to $7 per pound) so I wanted a new recipe to capture the pea tip flavor and stretch it, too. This soup was the answer. It's a recipe that evolved over days as we ate up the contents of the pot and I kept tweaking things. I ended up doubling down on the pea tips. The resulting recipe is a fabulous and elegant option for enjoying an Asian leafy green.

Sourcing and Prepping Pea Tips

I buy pea tips because my understanding is that Asian farmers grow a particular kind of plant to only harvest the tender tips for cooking. I've read that folks have tried harvesting the tender tips of snow peas but I've never grown snow peas to know if that would be the same. At a Chinese market, da/wan dou miao is sold by the bag. Ideally, they do not contain spirally, hard tendrils which look chewable but are dental floss-like. Such mature tips have to be trimmed of their tough tendrils. The ones I purchased for this recipe (thankfully!) had no toughie bits. The frond-like tips are easy to chew. Try one to make sure.

Pea tips keep in the fridge for several days. They may look smushed into the bag but are fine to eat with fresh flavor. Sometimes, a white flower bud hides among the greens and those are edible too!

Peel or Scrub the Soup Base Veggies?

The soup base starts with simple French cooking (think of vichyssoise, a type of creamy pureed potage-style soup). No fancy vegetables here aside from the fact that the celery, carrot and potatoes were all organically grown by local farmers. (The pea tips likely came from Asian farmers in Northern or Central California.) No stock needed because the exquisite vegetables supply the flavor. Water works! In summary, the soup base is simply a pureed vegetable soup that gets a hit of pea tips at the end. I brown the butter at the beginning to inject a layer of nutty flavor. I scrub the potatoes and carrots because their skins have a lot of flavor and nutrition. In fact, most of a potato's healthfulness lies in its skin. (Of course, I peel the onion. The celery got a good wash and slight trimming.)

Fixing Unexpected Meh Flavor

Everything progressed swimmingly well with this easy recipe. After simmering, the greens went in and the whole thing got pureed. The initial flavor was great -- lots of earthy, grassy, pea flavor but then it mellowed and muted! I garnished with Japanese togarashi and flaky salt and that was nice. But the overall flavor didn't say "I'm da dou miao!" With a decent amount of greens leftover, I sauteed them and got fancy by putting some in the bowl before adding the soup. That's what you see in this final recipe. The sauteed greens and pureed soup reinforced one another for a terrific bowl of soup. I added sauteed shrimp and chile oil on one occasion to make a light meal out of the soup.

Double Pea Tip Soup How-To Video

Double down on making the double pea tip soup by watching this quickie video. I've captured the highlights for you to get a sense of how things come together, especially how to assemble the final bowls! (If you cannot view the video, try refreshing your browser or removing any ad blocker that may be turned on for this site; I keep VWK running with the help of advertising. And, select "Stay" to keep watching the video. Thanks!)

Don't Have Pea Tips?

Use spinach or baby kale. The butter will amp up flavor for something special at your table.

Print Recipe

Double Pea Tip Soup

With pea tips (da/wan dou miao in Mandarin) in pureed and sauteed form, you're doubling down on the flavor of the remarkably tasty Asian green. Check the main blog post on sourcing the veggie.

Course: Soup

Servings: 6

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
10 ounces yellow or Yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and coarsely chopped
1 large (6 ounce) carrot, scrubbed and coarsely chopped
2 large ribs celery, coarsely chopped (3 ounces total)
1 pound pea tips
Shimichi togarashi, chile oil (see Note), or chili crisp, for garnish
Flaky sea salt, for garnish
Fine sea salt
1 large garlic clove, minced

Instructions

In a 3 to 4-quart pot over medium-low heat, melt 1 ½ tablespoons of the butter. Let cook for a minute or so, until fragrant and dark blonde. (If using oil, heat it over medium heat until barely rippling.) Add the onion and cook for 2 to 4 minutes, until soft and aromatic. Add the potato, carrot, celery, and ¾ teaspoon fine sea salt. Give things good stir, then add water to cover by 1 inch (or enough water for some of the veggies to float).
Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to simmer, uncovered, for about 25 minutes, until the carrot and potato are soft enough to be crushed or split when pressed against the wall of the pan with a spoon.
Add 6 ounces of pea tips. Stir, and after they soften and collapse in the pot, turn off the heat. Let cool 5 to 10 minutes, uncovered. Using a blender, whirl the sou in batches to a smooth texture. The soup will have specks of green from the pea tips. If the texture is too thick, splash in water. Season with extra sea salt, if needed.
In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the remaining butter (or oil). Add the garlic and cook for 20 to 30 seconds until aromatic. Dump in the pea tips and sprinkle with sea salt to lightly season. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring, until softened and cooked to a rich dark green color. Turn off the heat.
Divide the pea tips between soup bowls, arranging them as a tall pile in the center. Pour the soup around the pea tips. Sprinkle on the togarashi (or drizzle on the chile oil or chili crisp), and add 1 pinch of flaky sea salt. Serve immediately and tell diners to mix things up to eat.

Notes

The soup is great hot or warm. Refrigerate for up to 3 days and reheat with a splash of water.

Make your own fantastic chile oil with this easy recipe.

A blender yields the smoothest texture. Use a processor for a slightly coarser, more rustic result.

Variations: Add a splash of cream, half and half, or milk (dairy or non-dairy) to enrich.

To include shrimp to the bowl, cut 4 ounces of shelled and deveined extra-large shrimp into chunks or halved them symmetrically so they'll turn into corkscrews (see this page for a video tip). Cook them in the skillet before or after sauteing the pea tips. Use a nubbin of butter plus sprinkling of salt. Add them to the bowl after you've poured in the soup so they will peek out a bit.