Hi everybody, I just wanted to update this post with the results of Hot N Sour Soup: Round One. I used the following recipe and made modifications: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/577584. On my first shot, this was by far and away the VERY BEST hot N sour I've ever made. Thanks soo much to everyone in this post for the help. I could almost go back to my old recipe- just substituting white pepper and chili oil for chili flakes, and Chinese black vinegar for red wine/rice vinegar.

For those interested, here are the changes we made for taste. The first flavor you get is the white pepper, which is dead-on from what you get at restaurants. After the first hit, though, it tastes watery and you don't get the sour. My husband and I poured over the stove for about 15 more minutes adding things and tinkering, with the final additions being:

total of 3 tsp white pepper
total of 1/2 tsp chili oil
3 T plus 1.5 tsp Chinese mature (aged Black) vinegar
1 T double-dark soy sauce and 1 T light soy sauce

Thank you so much for sharing your recipes! I'll be doing hot and sour soup trials in the next few weeks so I'll be posting soon about how it goes! Part of what makes Asian cuisine so hard, and yet so wonderful, for me anyway is fighting to find the balance between a taste you love and a taste you're used to getting in a restaurant. I'm excited to get in the kitchen and get started!

What I'm reading is that black vinegar is the distinctive taste (or one of the primary ones, anyway) in hot and sour soup. A few recipes mentioned Donghu brand "mature vinegar," which I understand is aged black vinegar. The aging is supposed to make it less bitter than non-aged Chinese black vinegar. I bought both at Ranch 99 today, so we'll see Wednesday when I make my first try since my post.

It's been two years of trial and error for me, on this one recipe, so I can hear you there. I've wondered about lily roots/buds and black fungus, but there's no way I could get my husband to eat them!

Love it! I'll try a few drops of fish sauce. I've long wondered if the HOT was Sichuan pepper, so I'll have to try to find that around here. You'd think in the Bay Area it would easy to find!

Thanks, paulj, your post is full of great thoughts!! I've wondered if my lack of mushrooms might contribute to lack of flavor, and even thought about using beef broth to add heartiness/umami. Any thoughts about beef broth?

It's sour, but just with no flavor. I'm reading since my post that part of the flavor in restaurant soups is Chinese Black Vinegar?

I'm a South-East Asian cuisine fanatic, but I've been flirting with Chinese hot and sour soup for 2 years now. My efforts... stink. It tastes like nothing, and yet all recipes I've found seem to list the same ingredients. Please help me- how do you make rich, hearty, flavorful hot and sour soup?

**Here are some of my questions** :
- chile paste isn't hot, chile flakes don't do much either. We love spicy foods and end up adding hot sauce to the finished soup. How do you make it hot?
- I know that heat is all-important in Chinese cuisine. I put my stock pot on the double-boiler to make it as hot as possible... is this necessary?
- I've tried rice wine vinegar, a 50/50 split of rice wine vinegar with red wine vinegar, but still no taste.
- we like seafood or seafood wontons, rather than pork. Any ideas on proteins?
- my husband abhors mushrooms... does that impact the flavor of the soup?

**MY HOT & SOUR SOUP RECIPE
Serves 2-3
5 cups chicken broth
1 ½ tsp chile paste (or just add your favorite bottled hot sauce at the end)
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup cornstarch stirred into ¼ cup water
Tofu sliced thin and long, shrimps (peeled and deveined) or scallops
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp double dark soy sauce
Green onions to garnish

Bring water to a boil and add chile paste, if using. Add tofu, pour in red wine vinegar and mix well. Add the meat or seafood, then stir in the cornstarch and water mixture. Stir constantly at a low boil for 5 minutes to thicken the broth. While stirring, add beaten eggs and let swirl for about one minute. Turn off heat and add sesame oil and soy sauce, stirring well. Garnish with green onions.