Hot and Sour Soup

Let’s get one thing straight.  I am no cook.  I will nevereverever turn this into anything even close to a foodie blog.  My diy stops at mixing paint, not ingredients.  Maybe I’ll share a recipe or two that I’ve found somewhere that’s really good and always easy but I’ll never be showing off my cooking skills because, well, they are nonexistent.  The hubs on the other hand, he’s another story. 

So, with that out of the way, I recently found a recipe to the best soup ever in the history of soup.  Hot and sour courtesy of those culinary geniuses, the Chinese.  Hot and sour soup is my fave soup ever and quite possibly my fave food.  A little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in Steubenville, Ohio (miss you Hong Kong…tear) makes thee best h & s I’ve ever, ever had and down here in Mobile, well the Chinese have yet to get it right.  But, whilst in the mood for it the other night, I invoked pinterest and found a recipe that looked pretty easy and pretty good.

Ready for it? 

Here ‘tis.  Click for it.

I made a couple of tweaks to the recipe however - instead of the fresh gingerroot, I added a 1/2 tsp. of ground ginger, I skipped the scallions because I forgot to grab some, I used black pepper instead of white (Google told me the only real difference is looks), and I added a tid bit of extra soy sauce to my bowl de jour before I downed it.  I might also mention that letting the soup sit for an hour after cooking is better than eating it right away.  That way, the flavors mingle and soak into each other and ohhhh, it’s so much better.  This recipe doesn’t make the ‘hottest’ hot and sour so to add a little more kick you might want to add some hot pepper oil or flakes or something of the sort.

Update:  I was wrong-o about the no-difference between black and white pepper.  As it turns out, a wise commenter informed me that – “The heat actually comes from the white pepper. Give it a try, it is really different than black pepper and believed to have many curative properties. Sometimes you can find small pre-filled grinders of white pepper in the spice section. It "makes" the soup.” 

Here are the Chinese ingredients I used:
 
I found all of them in the “International Foods” section in our grocery store.

Here’s what my hot and sour looked like right before I inhaled it:

So good.  So very good.  It was gone in a day and a half because I had it for dinner the day I made it, and lunch and dinner the day after.  I’ll be making it again in less than 24 hours only to have it gone just as quick.

If you try it, let me know what you think!

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P to the S…Lily told me that she’s positive hot and sour soup helped labor commence for both of her boys so if you be of child-bearing age, take note.  I know what I’ll be drinking in t-minus six months.  :)