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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