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 cannot wait to try this! I love that this is easy to convert to a gluten-free recipe. Cannot wait to try!
I made this soup tonight. Really pleased with the result. Definitely will be added to my favourite list.
This is the best (and easiest) recipe I’ve found for Hot & Sour Soup. It smells right, but tastes mostly like the shiitake mushrooms. The only things I omitted were the green onions and the lily flowers, since my wife doesn’t like them. Any suggestions?
I would reduce the shiitake mushrooms (or skip it all together). If you’re not using the mushrooms and lily flower, I would def use chicken broth instead of water for the soup base.
Hi Maggie,
My original comment was somehow eaten by my phone. So I will try again: the soup was very good but a bit too salty for us. The following additions fixed the problem and improved the overall taste:
• added white vinegar and an equal amount of water
• added more white pepper
• added a pinch of granulated sugar
• added about 3/4 cup of soft tofu
• mix well, bring to a simmer, and serve
Salt is present in Chinese cooking wine, black vinegar, and all versions of commercial broth, so adding salt should be done with care and tasting. By the way, fresh or canned bamboo shoots are also a tasty and crunchy addition.
Made this for the first time today. Was great. Excellent recipe easy to follow and make. Thank you.
This recipe is great! Easy and authentic– exactly what I was looking for. I personally prefer slicing the tofu in strips to approximately match the size and shape of the other ingredients but this was the only alteration I made.
Very good.
I tried this recipe, it was successful. The soup is tasty and yummy. Not bad for first trial. Instructions and notes are very helpful. I will certainly try other recipes. Thank you.
Just made this and WOW! Delicious recipe. Only change was a lot more pepper because I like it spicy. Thank you very much for sharing!
great
Just amazing!!! You’re a great teacher!
I have made this now a gazillion times it is such a great recipe
Thank you
Excellent recipe. Just made it and it’s terrific. Thank you.
Thanks for the hot and sour soup recipe. I made this yesterday but omitted the meat and cornstarch and used less water, for the broth and it was still tasty. I used rice vinegar and thought it worked nicely. My family enjoyed this hot and sour soup on this cold winter night! Yum!
Thank you so much Maggie. I am a retired professional chef you was once married into a Chinese American family. For years I enjoyed the cooking of my wife and her family. When my wife and I went our separate ways I missed Chinese home cooking. When I retired I began to teach myself Chinese dishes. You recipes and teaching skills are invaluable. Tonight I made your Hot and Sour Soup. I have made it often and everyone loves it. Your website is one of my top five cooking websites. Bless you.
Humbly,
Franco
Amazing!!! Restaurant quality recipe. My husband and I loved it so much…looking forward making it again. Thanks for sharing!
This was the most delicious hot and sour soup I’ve tried. I need to work on my egg drizzling technique because mine just made the soup silky instead of ribbons. The pork made it so satisfying too. I did use the black vinegar but then added about the same amount of white vinegar as well, for more sour. One question. What do you do with the other half of the tofu. Does it freeze for later? Anyway my friend and I oohed and aahed the whole time we ate.
This was so good, I”ll be making it again and agin! I couldn’t believe I was making something we thought we could only buy in an Asian restaurant. My husband was very impressed as well and said it was excellent. The steps were easy to follow. Thanks! :))
I love this recipe so much.. But can we substitute shaoxing wine and Chinkiang vinegar with another ingredients?
For me the Chinkiang vinegar is quite important and I wouldn’t recommend changing it, but my husband actually has a recipe that doesn’t use both: https://gastroplant.com/vegan-hot-and-sour-soup/ The result is milder but I like it as well 🙂
Made it and loved it. Added bamboo shoots and tomato. No pork, shrimp instead. Thank you.