Hot and sour soup is a soup from Asian culinary traditions. In all cases, the soup contains ingredients to make it both spicy and sour.

“Hot and sour soup” is a Chinese soup claimed variously by the regional cuisines of Beijing and Sichuan as a regional dish. The Chinese hot and sour soup is usually meat-based, and often contains ingredients such as day lily buds, wood ear fungus, bamboo shoots, and tofu, in a broth that is sometimes flavored with pork blood. Sometimes, the soup would also have carrots and pieces of pork. It is typically made hot (spicy) by white pepper, and sour by Zhenjiang vinegar.

United States Soup preparation may use chicken or pork broth, or may be meat-free. Common key ingredients in the American Chinese version include bamboo shoots, toasted sesame oil, wood ear, cloud ear fungus, day lily buds, vinegar, egg, corn starch, and white pepper. Other ingredients include button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, or straw mushrooms and small slices of tofu skin. It is comparatively thicker than the Chinese cuisine versions due to the addition of cornstarch.

Ingredients
1/4 C. dried wood ear mushrooms
Water, for soaking

Sauce one:
1 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of sugar

Sauce two:
5 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons white pepper
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil

For the soup:
6 cups chicken stock
1/4 carrot, julienned
1/3 cup in thin sliced bamboo shoots (canned is fine)
1/2 tsp. thin slices ginger, julienned
1/3 block soft tofu, cut into 1/4 inch strips
3 tablespoons cornstarch slurry (3 tablespoons cornstarch and 3 tablespoons water)
2 eggs, beaten w/ 1/2 teaspoon rice vinegar mixed in
1/3 C Cilantro, finely chopped

Happy Cooking,
UB
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Winter melon soup is prepared with winter melon as a primary ingredient and is a part of Chinese cuisine and the cuisine of Hong Kong. It is served often at Chinese banquets.

Winter melon soup may have a slightly sweet flavor. Some recipes may use several ingredients in addition to winter melon, which may include ham, carrot, mushrooms and chicken. Winter melon soup may be served hot, yet has been described as having a cooling effect upon the body when consumed.

Benincasa hispida, the wax gourd, also called ash gourd, white gourd, winter gourd, tallow gourd, ash pumpkin, winter melon, Chinese preserving melon[ and (Alu) Puhul, is a vine grown for its very large fruit, eaten as a vegetable when mature.

In Chinese cuisine, the gourds are used in stir fries or combined with pork or pork/beef bones to make winter gourd soup, often served in the scooped out gourd, carved by scraping off the waxy coating. It is also chopped and candied as winter melon candy (dōng guā táng), commonly eaten at New Year festivals, or as filling for Sweetheart cake (lǎopó bǐng). It has also been used as the base filling in Chinese and Taiwanese mooncakes for the Moon Festival.

Happy Cooking,
UB

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