Chinese restaurant-style hot and sour soup made easy! The hearty, spicy, sour broth is loaded with mushrooms, silky eggs, and tofu. I’ve included lots of notes so you can tweak the recipe with the ingredients you have on hand, plus how to make this dish vegetarian. {Vegetarian adaptable}
Hot and sour soup is such a popular dish takeout dish, along with egg drop soup and wonton soup. It’s one of those things that we almost always order when eating in a restaurant. The soup is loaded with so many goodies that I totally wouldn’t mind serving it as a main dish for a light dinner.
The soup base
Did you know that hot and sour soup is actually super easy to make?
Yes, the recipe below might look a bit long, because I wanted to create a proper restaurant-style hot and sour soup for you. But in fact, the soup base requires only a few ingredients:
- Chinkiang vinegar
- White pepper powder
- Water mixed with cornstarch (to thicken the soup)
That’s it!
The sourness of the soup comes from the Chinkiang vinegar. And the spiciness comes from the white pepper powder. No peppers or chili oil required!
A word about the dried ingredients
My recipe uses some dried ingredients that might require a trip to an Asian market or a purchase on Amazon. But if you don’t want to make the extra effort, you can totally skip these ingredients. I will explain why.
I previously discussed how to use Chinese dried veggies to create a superior flavor in another recipe – Buddha’s Delight, a Jai (Buddhist vegetarian) dish. The logic is the same here. The foundation of the broth consists of dried lily flowers and dried shiitake mushrooms. They both have a very concentrated smoky, earthy, and woody aroma. Once you rehydrate them, the rehydrating water will turn a dark brown color as it becomes infused with the great flavor. Do not throw this water away. It is the best vegan broth and you should use it to make the soup base.
The other dry ingredient is wood ear mushrooms. It is a mildly flavored fungus that adds a crunchy texture to the dish.
Chinese families always have these ingredients on hand because they allow a cheaper and healthier way to create a flavorful broth. If you use these ingredients, your soup will turn out more like the Chinese restaurant version.
However, if you do not have these ingredients, simply skip them and use chicken stock or vegetable stock instead of water to make your soup.
Cooking notes
1. How to convert this recipe to vegetarian
Simply skip the “marinate” part of the recipe, including the pork and the few ingredients for the marinade. Many Chinese recipes use a small amount of meat to add volume and texture to the dish. Skipping the meat won’t affect the flavor of the soup.
2. Other vegetables and proteins to use in this recipe
There are so many more ingredients that work well in this dish.
For example, some of my favorite vegetables include – tomatoes, napa cabbage, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and bok choy.
You can also use a different type of protein to replace the pork. For example, chicken or shrimp would work great. You can even throw in a few slices of cooked sausage or ham to make the cooking faster.
3. Workflow
Add vinegar and white pepper at the end of cooking – this is very important. Otherwise the pureness of the vinegar will disappear as the vinegar evaporates and the white pepper will release a bitter taste if heated for too long.
More Chinese takeout recipes
If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it @omnivorescookbook on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with.
Hot and Sour Soup (酸辣汤)
Ingredients
(Optional) Rehydrate (*Footnote 1)
- 1/3 cup dried shiitake mushrooms
- 1/4 cup dried woodear mushrooms
- 1/4 cup dried lily flowers
Optional Marinate (*Footnote 2)
- 1/2 lbs (230 g) pork loin (or chicken breast) cut into thin strips
- 1/2 tablespoon Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch
Soup
- 2 teaspoons minced ginger
- 2 green onions chopped
- 2 tablespoons Chinkiang vinegar
- 1 teaspoon white pepper powder (or 1/2 teaspoon white pepper powder for a less spicy dish)
- 6 cups water or chicken stock (*Footnote 3)
- 1/2 block (8 oz / 227 g) firm tofu, cubed
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce or soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon salt or to taste
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
Instructions
- Gently rinse dried shiitake mushrooms, dried wood ear mushrooms, and lily flowers with tap water. Soak each of them with 1.5 to 2 cups warm water in three big bowls. Rehydrate for 30 minutes to 1 hour, until tender. Slice mushrooms into strips. Snip off the tough ends of lily flowers and discard. Remove tough ends of wood ear mushrooms, then chop into bite-sized pieces. Reserve the marinating water from lily flower and shiitake mushrooms, 2 cups in total
- Combine pork, Shaoxing wine, salt and cornstarch in a bowl. Mix well by hand. Marinate for 10 - 15 minutes.
- Add Chinkiang vinegar and white pepper into a small bowl. Mix well until the white pepper is completely dissolved.
- Add water or chicken stock, ginger, and green onion into a pot and heat over medium-high heat. If you reserved the marinating liquid from step one, you can add it plus 4 cups water or chicken stock.
- Add rehydrated wood ear mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, lily flowers, and tofu to the pot. Cook until bringing to a simmer. Add soy sauce and turn to medium-low heat.
- Mix the cornstarch with 1/4 cup of water in a bowl until cornstarch is fully dissolved. Slowly swirl the cornstarch slurry into the soup. Stir to thicken the soup.
- Add the pork from step one into the soup, stirring several times to prevent the pork strips from sticking together. Add the salt. Slowly swirl in the beaten egg and stir well. The egg should be scattered and not clotted.
- Remove the pot from stove. Add the vinegar and pepper mixture and stir to mix well.
- Garnish with cilantro and drizzle with sesame oil. Give it a final stir. Taste the soup and add more salt if needed.
- Serve hot.
Notes
- If you do not have these dry ingredients, you can use half a pound of fresh mushrooms instead. Then use chicken stock instead of water to make the soup.
- Skip the meat if you want to create a vegetarian dish.
- Use chicken stock or vegetable stock instead of water if you are not using the dry ingredients (shiitake mushrooms, lily flowers, and wood ear mushrooms) in this recipe.
Video
Nutrition
The recipe was originally published on April 9, 2014 and updated on June 5, 2018.
I love this soup and I know a few people who’d be smitten if I made it for them!
Hi Gintare, thanks for stopping by and commenting! Hope you enjoy this dish. 🙂
This soup sounds very comforting and delicious Maggie! Every time we visit a Chinese restaurant we order a sweet- sour soup and can’t wait to try it at home soon.Lovely photos and video 🙂
J+C
Yep, it’s definitely a comfort food for me, and I made it very often because it’s so easy to cook. Happy cooking! 🙂
I just cooked a pot of this, and it is delicious! I am impressed that such a rich soup can be made so easily without any pre-made broth. Thanks for sharing the secret.
I’m so glad you like the soup and thank you for using my recipe! Yes, it’s a very rich soup without using broth. I cooked this a lot for dinner, since it requires so few ingredients. 🙂
My fiance loves hot and sour soup– I am going to have to try to make this for him! I have to say– your version looks way better than the stuff he orders when we’re out for Chinese 🙂
This soup would be amazing right now because it’s so cold in DC! I love that you included a video – it’s so good!
My hubby loves this soup. He will flip when I make it for him. Pinned.
Annamaria
Hello Maggie! Where do you purchase your woodear mushrooms? Thank you!
You can easily find them in Asian market, and also on Amazon: https://amzn.to/33BqL3b
They’re also called black fungus.
You should try some white hot and sour soup with hot oil. Do you not know that the adding of soy sauce is relatively new to this very old soup. By far the white soup is hands down the best I have ever had!
Kash
Do you have a recipe for the White Hot and Sour soup to share or is it just omitting the soy sauce that makes it white/light?
Maggie
Thanks for a great recipe. Made it many times and it’s always delicious
This was spot on. It was interesting to see how you can make a satisfying stock without much meat or stock cubes.
Hi Colin, I’m glad to see you like this recipe! Back in Beijing, my mom served soup almost everyday and most of the time she didn’t use a stock. The hot and sour soup is definitely one of our favorites. The other soup without using stock: soak some dried shrimps and dried scallops for 30 minutes, and use them to make a seafood clean broth. We usually add some napa cabbage (or other greens) with tofu. The soup was quite light, but flavorful.
Thanks Maggie; next time I go to the Chinese supermarket, I’ll look out for the dried shrimps and scallops, and I’ll look forwards to trying them. I’ll also need another bag of shiitake; I have chicken stock in the freezer, but it is quite precious stuff and I can’t use it every time.
I’m glad to help! The homemade chicken stock is precious in our house too. I’ve been trying a new thing lately, by using a bit pancetta (might able to be replaced with bacon) to make a pork soup. I will share the recipe soon. By the way, have you ever tried miso soup? It’s not Chinese food, but we love it. So simple to make and does not require using a stock.
“Miso”, that can go on the list too!
Definitely! It’s so easy to use, stay in fridge forever, and go well with any veggies and protein!
Hi, I love Hot and Sour Soup and I will try this. You’re clear information on how to make a flavorful broth with those dry ingredients is so true. Those ingredients make a wonderful broth.
I am in Japan and I can add a note to the MISO SOUP question, here in Japan they would use a quickly made broth made from kelp and or bonito flakes. Making Miso Soup with just hot water is unheard of. Also, instant/powdered kelp/bonito is available too, making soup making easier.
Hi Maggie. From the website Pantry section I learned about different types of rice vinegar. For the hot and sour soup, which type of rice vinegar you prefer? I noticed that you used a black vinegar but was it the Chinkiang or the Shanxi Extra Aged vinegar? Thanks Maggie. Your website is such a great resource for my Chinese cooking . Thank you!
My husband and I loved the soup. I saw 1 teaspoon white pepper in the ingredients and I thought that was an awful lot. I put in 1/2 teaspoon and it was right at the edge of being too hot for us. Had I put in the whole teaspoon we would have had to call the fire department LOL.
Hi Eva, I’m glad to hear your soup turned out not too spicy. My family loves very spicy food and we might have added too much white spice powder!
This may seem obvious, but I am a novice cook. I am supplying for soup for my son’s teachers and your recipe was the one that I signed up to bring. Is it okay to leave this soup in the crockpot on warm so the teachers will have it warm for their lunch?
Hi Melora, yes you can keep the soup in crockpot. The cornstarch slurry will start losing thickening power if you keep the soup heated for too long time. But I think it should be OK as long as you make the soup the same day you serve it.
Happy cooking and I hope the teachers will enjoy the dish!
Hi very nice recipe but I have a question if I didn’t want to use wine can I substitute it with vinegar?
Thank you
Hi Stella, you can replace the wine with water, broth, or oil. Or skip the salt and use 1 teaspoon soy sauce instead.
Shaoxing wine is usually in China to eliminate the gamey flavor from the pork. But I found the meat in the US is less gamey, so it’s OK to skip the wine.
Happy cooking and hope your soup turns out great 🙂
Thank you! I made this soup today and it was excellent. I’ll definitely make it again!
Hi Doris, thanks so much for taking time and leaving a comment! I’m so glad to hear you tried my recipe and enjoyed the dish 🙂
Hope you have a great day!
I really love your hot and sour soup
I really love your hot and sour soup but am scared to make it
Hi Cathryn, I have another vegetarian hout and sour soup recipe that might be slightly easier to make: http://omnivorescookbook.com/vegetarian-hot-and-sour-soup/
I hope you’ll try it out some time because it’s really delicous 🙂
IS it possible to make this vegetarian?
She mentions in her recipe that to make it vegetarian, just omit the meat. And she says elsewhere that the meat is just to add texture (and nutrition, which is debatable), but there are plenty of other elements that add texture, so I think you should definitely go for it!
Hi Kristen, I do have a vegetarian hot and sour soup recipe here: http://omnivorescookbook.com/vegetarian-hot-and-sour-soup/
Happy cooking!
Hi! This recipe looks great and am looking forward to trying it. I just need to know what rice vinegar did you use. The one I found at my local store was white but I noticed you use black. Would it still work the same?
Hi Jess, I used Chinkiang vinegar, which is also called Chinese black vinegar. I highly recommend using this type because the flavor is very different from the light rice vinegar. You can find the vinegar on Amazon or on The Mala Market.
Glad I read the other questions before I asked the same question. Love my Black Vinegar, just a little bit adds what had been missing from my Chinese dishes. I have a great Asian Market down the street and have always found any ingredient your recipes called for.
Hi Maggie
Really looking forward to trying this.
Is white pepper powder different from what we just call white pepper?
Cheers
Clinton
Hi Clinton, I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing. I mention powder because sometimes people do buy the whole white peppers.
Happy cooking and hope your soup turns out great 🙂
The soup tasted fantastic! Thanks. It’s particularly impressive because the recipe is so simple. I’ve shared it with a couple of my vegetarian friends too.
Don’t substitute for the Chinkiang vinegar or white pepper. And, rather than cornstarch, I add a handful of broken, dried noodles. You get the starch thickener, and a bit of complexity.
hi maggie great recipe. one question – if using the soaking water for the dried shiitakes and lilies, how much water do you add. still 6 cups?
Yes, still 6 cups. You probably don’t have enough soaking water, so just add all the soaking water you can then use regular water for the rest.
Happy cooking and hope your soup turns out great!