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 have made this twice. It is fabulous. I do TRY to follow the directions explicitbly. I went to out local Asian market and a nice lady helped me get the mushrooms. The first time I didn’t chop mushroom.. just through them in pot. What started to be the size of a baby rose hydrated to a Hydrangea.size…. I’ll never do that again. Anyway the recipe is great. House smells good. It’s definitely here to stay.
thanks for the recipe! made it tonite!! super delish!!! tastes like restaurant. one question tho.. when do you add the ginger and green onion.. it doesnt say in the recipe.. or am i not seeing it???
thank you again !! love your recipes~~!!!!
Oops, sorry I forgot including those ingredients in the direction. Thanks for letting me know and I just edited the recipe.
I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the dish 🙂
Hey Maggie, I’ve made this soup three times earlier this year. It was fantastic. As kids my sister and I loved the hot and sour soup from our favorite restaurant. We’ve since developed a gluten sensitivity and can no longer eat at that place. Your soup tasted 100% like our well-love childhood favorite and it brought us heaps of joy! thank you so much!!
I was wondering, when you updated the recipe did you change any of the ingredients or methods or just the beautiful fotos? Thanks so much!
Hello Maggie,
Well, I’ve been making your Authentic Hot and Sour soup for quite awhile. I love it and eat it often using the recipe I originally got from your website and loaded into my recipe app. I told my sister about it, so she went here to your website and started asking me questions that made no sense to me. Now I see that you have changed the recipe from the one you used to have.
We’re both curious to know why and to know if you’ve completely removed the first recipe from your website.
Let us know please!!!
Nice site, good visuals and explanations!
I’ve been making hot and sour soup for 42 years ever since I first had a really good bowl of it as a teenager! It’s never made the same way twice! It usually depends on what I have on hand though I always have lily buds, shiitake, and black fungus on hand. Come to think of it, I have lots of dry fungi lurking in my pantry! ;D With this last batch, I’d made a stock from bones leftover from beef roast. The broth screamed hot and sour soup! I had some leftover corn that became part of the ingredients list. I used leftover egg shreds (kinshi tamago) instead of stirring raw egg in. I also added a big glop of fermented black bean in sesame chili oil. My soup was thick enough corn starch was not needed. Being half-Japanese with a Chinese aunt and cousins through marriage, food was a lot of fun! Thanks so much for sharing!
Hi! I just made your recipe last night, and my husband of seven years ate five large servings. I think that’s the most of anything I’ve made for him ever. I was hoping you could recommend a brand of ng vinegar cause the one I got at 99 ranch market yesterday sucked. I just read your bio, and I’m in Austin, TX too. Thanks for the excellent recipe.
Hi Maggie, We (Shanghaiese wife and I) made this yesterday but omitted the pork and added six chopped jumbo (16-20) shrimp and about 4-5 oz of tilapia. It was not quite spicy enough for my taste so added a little hot chili in oil and came out excellent.
Thanks for sharing that one. I have copied a few more of your recipes and will make them in due course. I’ll let you know how this old American can cook your Chinese dishes.
PS I lived in Xi’an, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong over about 20 years
Can you use the soaking liquid for the mushrooms and wood ear, etc. ? I don’t see that as recommended in your recipe.
Hi Anil, yes, you can use the soaking liquid from the mushrooms. I usually don’t use the wood ear soaking water because it contains next to none taste.
Love this recipe!!! Thank you so much for sharing. My parents have a neighbor from Taiwan who makes hot and sour soup that’s amazing and this is as close as it gets.
Your recipes are so authentic and easy to follow. Now my family think the mapo tofu and hot and sour soup surpassed even the most expensive restaurants.
Keep up the good work!
Maggie, I love Hot and Sour Soup and authentic Asian food so much that I am started to doubt my alleged 100% Italian heritage. With the hot and sour soup I NEEDED to find a recipe instead of ordering it takeout once or twice a week. I’m still trying to perfect your recipe and tonight is my third try. My first try, I didn’t realize that the dehydrated mushrooms and tofu “blew up” so much, but the taste was really great (I am fortunate to have a large Asian supermarket near my workplace). The second time, I rushed the process and it was not so good but that was my bad for rushing.. Tonight, I took my time, sliced the dried mushrooms and pulled the hard stem of the dried lily flowers before I rehydrated them and also made sure to slice the tofu into tiny slices. So far, it is going good, but I’m wondering what I can use to add a very slight sweetness to it. Thank you.
Just made my 3rd pot of this and love it! Thanks so much, this recipe is a keeper. By now I have my alterations nailed.
Most importantly is freshness of pepper to get the kick. First time bought pre-ground, just didn’t get hot. From then on ground my own in coffee grinder, bam! Second, bit more vinegar, but more soy. I am doing vego way, adding some fresh oyster mushrooms and a handful of greens as well is divine. Many thanks
I love this recipe! The only thing that would make easier to make is to have dehydrated ingredients amounts in grams. I found it difficult to measure those ingredients .
I haven’t made it yet because I’ve got everything but the Chinkiang vinegar (should arrive tomorrow). But I agree, after getting the dehydrated ingredients and seeing what they look like, I think it is going to be a little difficult measuring them. Weight in grams would be very helpful!
Your recipe doesn’t state how much soup stock to start with. I ended up using 2 quarts, adjusted amounts, we’ll see.
So the water that you use to soak the mushrooms in is used as the broth?
Yes I did. It adds an intense earthy flavor to the broth. If you don’t like the mushroom taste to be too strong, you can skip the marinade water and use some veggie stock instead 🙂
Are the pork strips cooked in advance, or added raw?
Hi Stan, these pork trips are added raw. They cook so fast (if you cut them very thin) and you want to just cook them through so they stay tender.
Does this soup freeze well?
Hi Alice, this soup tastes the best when you serve it fresh. The cornstarch will lose its potent if you freeze or fridge it. So if you did so, you need to reheat the soup in a pot and add more cornstarch slurry at the end so it reaches the same consistency.
Got it! Thank you, Maggie!!
I made this recipe a few nights ago and it was delicious!!!
Or thicken with arrowroot or potato starch, which will retain thickening after freezing.
Really nice authentic soup! Thank you
This recipe is sooooo good!!!! I usually don’t have high hopes when I try Asian recipes simply because I don’t live near an Asian market, and thus I have to substitute or go without a number of key ingredients. That being the case, this recipe was top notch! I didn’t have the dried mushrooms or lily flowers or the wine, but it is still excellent. I am already planning the next night that I will make this.