Hot and Sour Soup is Neither Hot Nor Sour
I'm sick to death of having to doctor hot and sour soups with vinegar and chili, even at otherwise respectable Sichuanese places. I have yet to find a Chinese restaurant in New York serving one that can legitimately carry this name.
Please point me in the right direction.
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8 Comments:
Hot and sour soup is a fickle thing. You can find good versions sometimes at your dingy take-out place. Seems kind of random but you really do have to look everywhere. Most places, it's not spicy at all or it's too watery or too goopy or whatever. It's hard to find.
foodinmouth at 4:57PM on 01/07/09
I love this topic name. Think about. Discuss. I've outright stopped ordering hot and sour soup. I remember enjoying it and ordering it regularly growing up, but every time I've ordered it recently, it's just been viscous and bland.
jlbrach at 5:18PM on 01/07/09
I've never ordered Hot & Sour soup, but my son loves it. I know that restaurants have been fiddling w/ recipes to eliminate trans-fats, etc. Now, I have no clue as to whether this is a problem w/ the "original" style recipes, but could such changes be the cause of the current taste distress? Or a perceived shift in "American" tastes?
Robbo at 8:55PM on 01/07/09
I forever love this wonderful soup, lumpy or whatever. This is the first thing that I was able to eat after not eating for 2 months and I am still eating it with extra tofu, my body is craving it and I always follow what my body is craving. I have to Dr. it up yes cause I like it very spicey so I add all sorts or crap to it, but it sure feels good to eat again. lol
pjracz10 at 1:34AM on 01/08/09
@foodinmouth -- I'm curious as to which dingy takeout places serve good hot and sour. In my experience, the dingier the place, the more the soup tastes of cornstarch :(
@jlbrach -- Hear, hear.
@Robbo -- I doubt trans fats are the issue here, as vinegar and chili sauce shouldn't contain any fat at all.
@pjracz -- Sigh. I grew up eating the kind of hot and sour soup so hot and sour that any further doctoring would be dangerous. Of course, that was in Hong Kong, where hot and sour soup is thickened with pig's blood. In the US, in addition to being bland, it also tends to be vegetarian.
Michele Humes at 8:23PM on 01/08/09
There was a restaurant on the southeast corner of Grand St & Bowery that made the most delicious, soul-satisfying Hot & Sour soup I've ever had. A big bowl was only $4. Sadly, the restaurant is gone, and I've not had a bowl since that has even come close.
Sommelier at 9:17PM on 01/08/09
@Michele Humes I think I would have gotten sick with the pigs blood thickener (but then again I grew up eating blut wurst and still love it), but for not eating NOTHING for 2 months and then I finally crave something it had to be hot and sour soup WITH extra tofu (vegetarian) just hit the spot. When you don't eat this long your taste buds gets insane with flavor. I was craving the taste of it, tofu,nani, bamboo shoots and eggs, it broke my fast. Still am. lol.
pjracz10 at 4:19AM on 01/09/09
Methinks that this is a forever unresolvable problem because both hot and sour are such relative terms. Your hot is my mild and my sour is your bland... I'm on a quest to create my own version that suits me 'cus I too always get varied results when I order out. It's not that tough to prepare but I'm still searching for that "perfect" bowl. My problem is that wven when I find a good one in a restaurant one day, the next it's simply not what I remember. Too bad, unlike Spaghetti Carbonara, there hasn't been developed a troop of "purist police" to clean up this sticky question once and for all!
czken at 2:30AM on 01/10/09