Hot and sour soup facts for kids
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| Type | Soup |
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| Hot and sour soup | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 酸辣湯 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 酸辣汤 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "Sour and spicy soup" | ||||||||||||||||||
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Hot and sour soup is a yummy and exciting soup found in many Asian countries. As its name suggests, this soup is both spicy and sour! Different countries and regions have their own special ways of making it, using various ingredients to create unique flavors. It's a popular dish that warms you up and tingles your taste buds at the same time.
Contents
Hot and Sour Soup Around the World
Hot and sour soup is enjoyed in many different places, and each region adds its own twist to this classic dish. Let's explore some of these delicious variations!
North America
United States
In the United States, hot and sour soup is a popular dish in American Chinese cuisine. It can be made with chicken or pork broth, or sometimes without any meat at all.
Common ingredients in the American version include bamboo shoots, toasted sesame oil, wood ear fungus, day lily buds, and vinegar. It also often has egg, corn starch (which makes it thicker), and white pepper for spice. You might also find button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, or straw mushrooms, and thin slices of tofu.
East Asia
China
In China, hot and sour soup is a traditional dish claimed by regions like Beijing and Sichuan. The Chinese version is usually meat-based, often with pork.
It commonly includes ingredients like day lily buds, wood ear fungus, bamboo shoots, and tofu. Sometimes, carrots and pieces of pork are added. The soup gets its spicy kick from red peppers or white pepper, and its sour taste from vinegar.
Japan
Japanese hot and sour soup uses a traditional dashi broth. This broth is flavored with vinegar, soy sauce, and sake (a type of rice wine).
Ingredients often found in Japanese hot and sour soup include shiitake mushrooms, tofu, bamboo shoots, and red chilis. The soup is made thicker with eggs and potato starch.
South Asia
India
In India, this soup is seen as a Chinese dish. It's made with red and green chillies, ginger, carrots, snow peas, tofu, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a little bit of sugar.
Pakistan
In Pakistan, hot and sour soup is typically made with chicken, carrots, cabbage, chillies, corn flour, eggs, vinegar, soy sauce, and salt. It might also contain bean sprouts and capsicum.
Southeast Asia
Cambodia
In Cambodia, there are a couple of popular sour soups.
- Samlor machu pkong means "Sour Shrimp Stew." It's a Cambodian sour soup flavored with lemon, chilis, and prawns or shrimp. This soup is often eaten on special occasions.
- Samlar machu yuan means "Vietnam sour soup." This hot and sour soup started in the Mekong Delta region. It's made with fish like mudfish, walking catfish, or tilapia, which are first fried or broiled. Sometimes, chicken is used instead of fish. The ingredients that give the stew its special flavor can change depending on what's available. These might include pineapple, tomato, ngo gai, fried garlic, papaya, lotus root, Thai basil, and Thai chili.
Thailand
Tom yum is a famous Thai soup. It's flavored with lemon grass, lime, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, fish sauce, and chilis.
Another Thai dish is Sour curry (Thai: แกงส้ม, RTGS: Kaeng som). This is a spicy and sour Thai curry that is like a soup.
Philippines
The Philippines has many sour soup dishes. They use different ingredients to make them sour, such as tamarind, unripe mangoes, guavas, butterfly tree leaves (called alibangbang), and different types of citrus fruits like calamansi. Other souring agents include santol, bilimbi (kamias), gooseberry tree fruits (karmay), and binukaw fruits.
Most of these dishes are part of a group called sinigang. There are also other regional dishes like sinampalukan, pinangat na isda, cansi, and linarang, which are cooked a bit differently. These dishes are also related to paksiw dishes, which are made sour using vinegar.
Vietnam
Canh chua (which means "sour soup") is a sour soup from the Mekong River region in southern Vietnam. It's usually made with fish from the Mekong River or shrimp, pineapple, tomatoes, and bean sprouts. It gets its flavor from tamarind and a lemony-smelling herb called ngò ôm (Limnophila aromatica). When canh chua is made like a hot pot, it's called lẩu canh chua.
See also
In Spanish: Sopa agripicante para niños
