Hot & Sour Egg Drop Soup
Hot & Sour Egg Drop Soup, SAY WHAAAT!
Yup that’s right, Hot & Sour combined with Egg Drop to deliver the flavor punch you need during quarantine 😋!
Have I mentioned lately how much I love Asian food, so much so, I have a section specific to these recipes on my site, Asian Inspired.
This dish was inspired by recently discovering Marion’s Kitchen. Marion Grasby, breaks down Asian recipes and makes them more approachable if you don’t have all the Asian ingredients on hand. Lucky for me, I had the traditional ingredients after my latest trip to our local Asian Market, Lo’s Seafood & Oriental Market.
The beautiful thing about this soup is that it can be created in 20 minutes, that’s right 20 minutes!!! If you’re a fan of Hot & Sour, you need to check out this dish and if you do try it, please share your feedback 🙏.
I hope you enjoy and cheers ❤️.
Some Notes
- Visit Your Local Asian Market – Guys, if you love Asian food, you need to visit your local Asian Market for traditional and regional ingredients. If the label is in a foreign language, you know it’s legit and will deliver the flavor needed. Two, during quarantine days, these establishments need our support and we can’t lose them in our communities 🙏.
- Chinese Black Vinegar/Chinkiang Vinegar – Chinese black vinegar is made from fermented black sticky rice or regular glutinous rice. It is mildly acidic, less so than a regular distilled white vinegar, with a faintly sweet flavor. If you don’t have this vinegar, rice wine vinegar is a good substitute. If you don’t have either, don’t worry, the soup will still deliver the sour notes with the white vinegar.
- Cooking Your Chicken – This is meant to be a quick and easy meal. If you’re looking to save time and effort in the kitchen, I’d suggest a store bought rotisserie chicken, like Marion suggested. However, here’s my delicious Roast Chicken recipe, if you’d rather roast from scratch. You could also fry up some chicken tenders or breast, if that’s your preference. Also if you’re looking to keep the soup vegetarian you could go without chicken too!
- Get Wild – This soup calls for 8oz of mushrooms and I’d suggest getting wood ear at your local Asian Market, shiitake or oyster mushrooms. White button mushrooms will also do, but go wild, if you can 👍.
- Hot & Sour – This soup delivers on both heat and sour. If you’d prefer to scale back on heat, go with 1/2tsp to 1/4tsp of pepper. Also while my recipe calls for white pepper, which is more common in Chinese cooking, you could easily use black pepper. The vinegar delivers the sour flavor and I’d suggest using the complete 1/4 cup in this recipe, I even finished with a little extra 😋.
- To Egg Drop or Not – I like the idea of combining the whisky egg, but you could certainly eliminate.
- Vegetarian /Vegan Options – If you’d prefer to go vegetarian, go with vegetable stock and omit the chicken and egg.
Hot & Sour Egg Drop Soup
A delicious and easy hot & sour soup
Ingredients
- 1 cup cooked chicken
- 8 oz mixed mushrooms, shitake and oyster
- 1 cup carrot, shredded
- 8 oz bamboo shoots sliced
- 1 green onion, sliced and greens reserved for garnishing
- 6 cups chicken stock or broth
- ¼ cup light soy sauce
- ¼ cup white vinegar
- 2 tsp Chinese black vinegar
- 2 tsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1 cup firm tofu, diced into cubes
- 3 TBSP cornstarch
- 3 TBSP cold water
- 1 egg, whisked
- sea salt, for seasoning, if needed
Instructions
- Prepare your ingredients.
- In a medium stockpot, add the chicken, mushrooms, carrot, bamboo shoots, whites from the green onions and the chicken stock. Place the stockpot over high heat and bring to a gentle simmer.
- Once you have a simmer in the pot, add the soy sauces, vinegars, white pepper and tofu. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 2-3 minutes or until mushrooms are just softened.
- Now create the cornstarch slurry with 3TBSP of cornstarch and cold water. Add the cornstarch slurry to the soup and stir. Simmer for another 3 minutes to thicken.
- Stirring the soup, add the whisked egg to form egg ribbons.
- Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning to your taste, i.e. add salt (to enhance the flavors, vinegar (for more sour) and/or pepper (for extra heat).
- Ladle the soup into bowls and top with the green onion tops. Enjoy and cheers 🥂.
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