A History of Bird’s Spit Soup

Bird’s Spit Soup is one of the most famous but also most controversial delicacies in Chinese cuisine. Many people are willing to spend small fortunes on this soup as they believe eating Bird’s Spit Soup will help them keep the last of their youth as well as have a long healthy life and a strong body. It’s believed a solution for these is to eat a bowl of Bird’s Spit Soup.
But the nutritional truth is if you want Bird’s Spit Soup to work its magic you will have to consume this soup regularly.
Just consuming a small bowl of Bird’s Spit Soup won’t bring your youth back or give you a long life. Some Bird’s Spit Soup promoters say a regular diet of 10 grams a day is necessary.

A History of Bird’s Spit Soup

Bird’s Spit Soup

Bird’s Spit Soups are made by the saliva of the swiftlet and the saliva is produced by the glands under the tongue. Swiftlets are small birds usually found in South-East Asia. The swiftlet lives in dark caves and similar to bats use echolocation to move around. Instead of twigs and straw, the swiftlet makes its nest from strands of its own gummy saliva which hardens when exposed to air.
This is where the controversy also comes in. Swiftlets are an endangered species and the more nests that are consumed the closer swiftlets head towards extinction. Swiftlets are especially endangered in areas like the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There are also places like Dazhou Island and Hainan where the Chinese government has banned harvesting Bird’s Spit Soups as swiftlets are nearly extinct in these locations.

Harvesting Nests

Today in many places, for example, Malaysia and Thailand, people have started farming the swiftlet’s to collect their nests. These farms are using empty houses as swiftlet’s homes.
Some of the processes of harvesting nests are extremely dangerous. The nest collector usually uses a very narrow, shaky, and long wooden ladder which they climb on top of to reach the nests which are usually located at the top of caves.
Many nest collectors have lost their lives because of this.

History of Bird’s Spit Soup

Chinese people began consuming Bird’s Spit Soup during the Ming Dynasty and in some tales, it’s believed Zhen He (鄭和), who was a Chinese explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, was the first person in Chinese history to eat Bird’s Spit Soup.
There are different grades of Bird’s Spit Soup which are red, yellow, and white. The red Bird’s Spit Soup is known in Chinese as the “blood-red Bird’s Spit Soup (血燕). The red Bird’s Spit Soup is the rarest. Some people believe the blood red Bird’s Spit Soup is made of the swiftlet's blood but that’s not true at all. The reason the Bird’s Spit Soup turn “blood red” is due to different diet and contained more mineral and different kind of nutrition.

Consuming Bird’s Spit Soup

The Bird’s Spit Soup doesn’t really have a lot of taste and the texture is a bit like softened gelatin and jelly. Chinese people usually cook Bird’s Spit Soup with rock sugar and serve as a sweet dessert soup. Some people prefer to cook Bird’s Spit Soup without rock sugar but mix it with some warm milk. The cooking process is extremely critical for cooking Bird’s Spit Soup. Microwave cooking or boiling on a stove will lose any taste it has as well as lose any of its nutritional values.
The common way to cook Bird’s Spit Soup is to slowly and gently steam it after soaking it in water.