Noodle Hot & Sour Soup
September 10th, 2009
I made this soup one weekday when I was feeling kind of sick. It was actually incredibly easy and tasted fantastic, much better than a lot of the hout & sour soups you get in restaurants. it’s particularly fun to make because you’re familiar with the basic taste but can tweak it to your liking. In my case, I added a few additional splashes of vinegar, several extra turns of black pepper and the noodles, which all contributed to it being a non-standard hot & sour soup.
Ingredients - made ~4 servings
- 1 cake extra firm tofu
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1.5 tablespoons sesame oil
- 1 package button mushrooms
- 3 stalks scallions
- 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
- 2 containers low sodium chicken broth
- 4 gloves garlic
- 1 egg
- Rice wine vinegar
- Sriracha
- Pasta of your choice
To begin, finely dice the ginger and garlic. Slice the mushrooms fairly thinly and dice the scallions into half inch thick slices. In a large pot, heat the sesame oil over high heat, and add these four ingredients. Add a few squirts of sriracha and turns of black pepper depending on your own spice tastes.
As the mushrooms begin to cook down after a few minutes, add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce so that they soak up some of the soy flavor. After roughly 6 minutes total of sauteeing, cute the tofu block into cubes and add to the pot, stirring well.
Add about 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar, the two containers of chicken stock and remaining soy sauce. Stir thoroughly and bring to a boil over high heat. Once at a boil, check the taste. Of particular interest, take note of 1) the spice content, 2) the tangy, vinegary, sour flavor, and 3) the saltiness. As I mentioned above I kind of kept adding vinegar, black pepper and sriracha until it was pretty hot and pretty sour. Once you’re pretty happy with the flavor, reduce to medium heat and simmer. In a separate small bowl, crack and whisk an egg. Add the egg to the pot and stirl while it scrambles into the soup. This is probably the coolest part of making the soup, as it really gives the soup a surprisingly silky texture and good addition of flavor.
I decided that the soup alone wouldn’t be hearty enough for a meal so wanted to add some pasta. We had some shellish pasta on hand, but really whatever you’d like would work pretty well. I added the dry pasta to the simmering soup and let it cook there. This is a technique I really like to do with pasta and don’t think is done enough. Why cook pasta in water, even if salted, when you could cook it in a soup, tomato sauce, etc… The pasta should take roughly the same amount of time cooking in the soup as in a pot of boiling water, roughly 8-12 minutes. Once done, check the seasoning and add additional splashses of soy sauce or rice wine vinegar.
