Hot and Sour Soup with Tofu

$6.72 recipe / $1.12 serving
by Beth Moncel
4.85 from 45 votes
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So, I actually made this Hot and Sour Soup last week, but got so busy with Thanksgiving madness that I didnโ€™t have a chance to post it until today. But thatโ€™s okay, I figure you might need this recipe now, when youโ€™re stuffed to the brim and maybe looking for something a little on the lighter side.

Overhead view of a pot full of hot and sour soup with colorful vegetables and cubes of tofu. A wooden spoon in the center.

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What is Hot and Sour Soup?

You may recognize hot and sour soup from your neighborhood Chinese take out menu. Itโ€™s a really flavorful soup with a tangy broth that isnโ€™t too heavy or thick. I added some cubed tofu to the broth to give my soup a little more substance, then ladled it all over a bowl full of colorful vegetables. This is one of those awesome dishes that is not only really delicious, but you feel awesome about eating it because you just know itโ€™s full of all sorts of โ€œgood for youโ€ things. I love that.

What Makes Hot and Sour Soup Sour?

The sourness of the hot and sour soup comes from vinegar. The sour flavor helps keep this soup light, even though hot soup usually sits heavy on the stomach. Itโ€™s also a nice contrast to the spicy red chile sauce. 

Serving Options

There are two options for serving this soup. Ladle the hot broth over the vegetables and let them slightly wilt from the heat, or stir the vegetables right into the pot of hot broth and let them cook until tender. The first option (ladling broth over vegetables) makes the best presentation, but if youโ€™re not into slightly crisp, only lightly blanched vegetables, you might not like this option as much.

Cooking the vegetables in the broth makes them softer, but you will lose some of the vibrant color. And, as I found, while the soup sits in your fridge, the pretty purple from the cabbage bleeds out into the broth and then up into the tofu. Itโ€™s really kind of funny looking to see violet tofu cubes in your soup, but I promise the flavor is not compromised. :)

Overhead view of a bowl full of hot and sour soup with vegetables and cubed tofu, chili garlic sauce in the center of the bowl
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Easy Hot and Sour Soup with Vegetables and Tofu

4.85 from 45 votes
This easy hot and sour soup is light on the stomach, but big on flavor! The spicy and tangy broth is full of colorful vegetables and tender cubes of tofu.
Author: Beth Moncel
A bowl of hot and sour vegetable soup with herbs with a spoon.
Servings
Prep 20 minutes
Cook 15 minutes
Total 35 minutes
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Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp canola oil ($0.04)
  • 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger ($0.11)
  • 4 green onions ($0.50)
  • 1/4 red cabbage ($0.50)
  • 3 carrots ( $0.26)
  • 8 oz. button mushrooms ($1.99)
  • 6 cups vegetable broth ($0.75)
  • 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce (or more to taste) ($0.05)
  • 1.5-2 Tbsp rice vinegar ( $0.19)
  • 1 Tbsp chili garlic sauce or sambal olek ( $0.34)
  • 14 oz. block extra firm tofu ($1.99)
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Instructions 

  • Thinly slice the cabbage, mushrooms, and the green onions (both the green and white ends of the onions). Peel the carrots, then either slice them thinly, use a vegetable peeler to slice them into ribbons, or cut them into thin sticks (julienne).
  • Add the canola oil, grated ginger, and the sliced white ends of the green onion to a large pot. Sautรฉ the ginger and onion over medium heat until soft (1-2 minutes). Add the vegetable broth to the pot, along with the soy sauce, vinegar, and chili garlic sauce. The amount of soy sauce, vinegar, and chili garlic sauce needed may be subjective and will depend on how much salt your vegetable broth contains. Start with a smaller amount of each, then add more to your taste. The final broth should be tangy and spicy. Heat the broth until piping hot.
  • Drain the tofu, then cut it into small cubes (small enough to fit on a spoon). Add the tofu to the hot broth, and allow it to heat through ( a few minutes).
  • Either add the sliced vegetables to the soup pot and cook until softened, or divide the vegetables into individual bowls for serving, then spoon the hot broth over top. Sprinkle the sliced green portion of the green onions over each bow. More chili garlic sauce can also be added to each bowl if desired.

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Equipment

  • Chefโ€™s Knife
  • Color Cutting Boards
  • Liquid Measuring Cup
  • Grater

Nutrition

Serving: 1ServingCalories: 131.5kcalCarbohydrates: 13.05gProtein: 9.12gFat: 5.72gSodium: 1068mgFiber: 3.28g
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Scroll down to see the step by step photos!

Front view of a shallow bowl of vegetables and tofu with hot and sour soup broth

How to Make Hot and Sour Soup โ€“ Step by Step Photos

Vegetables for Soup - mushrooms, red cabbage, carrot and green onion

Begin by prepping all of the vegetables. I used 1/4 head red cabbage (STILL trying to use up that cabbage weeks later!), an 8oz. container of button mushrooms, about 4 green onions, and a few carrots.

Sliced Vegetables on a cutting board

Thinly slice the cabbage, mushrooms, and green onions (youโ€™ll be using both the green and white ends of the green onions at different points, so keep them separated). You can either cut the carrots into very thin sticks (julienne), or use a vegetable peeler to make thin ribbons (or hey, use a spiralizer!).

Knob of ginger on a grater

Grate about 1 Tbsp of fresh ginger, as well. I keep this little knob of ginger in my freezer and it really does make it SO much easier to grate. No stringy stuff clogging up the grater! :D

Green onion and ginger in a soup pot with a wooden spoon.

Add the white portion of the sliced green onions and the grated ginger to a large soup pot along with 1 Tbsp canola oil. Sautรฉ the onion and ginger over medium heat until soft (about one or two minutes).

Better Than Bouillon soup base jar

Add six cups of vegetable broth. I use Better Than Bouillon concentrate to make my broth. 1 tsp BTB + 1 cup water = 1 cup broth.

Rice Vinegar bottle

To the broth youโ€™ll want to add about 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce (depending on how salty your broth already is), and 1.5 to 2 Tbsp of rice vinegar. Rice vinegar has a very mild flavor, but still has that nice tangy-sour effect. I like mine pretty sour, so I added 2 Tbsp of vinegar, but if youโ€™re unsure, start with a smaller amount and add more until you get the broth where you like it.

Chili Garlic Sauce bottle

For the hot component of the โ€œhot and sourโ€ broth, I used 1 Tbsp chili garlic sauce. You could also use sambal olek or even sriracha. If you donโ€™t want your soup spicy at all, just leave it out.

Hot and Sour soup broth in the soup pot, a wooden spoon sitting on the edge

Once you have the broth hot and sour to your liking, let it heat through until itโ€™s piping hot.

Tofu Package

Take one 14oz. block of extra firm tofu and drain the liquid from the package.

Diced Tofu

Cut the tofu into small cubes. You want the cubes small enough to fit on a soup spoon. I ended up making the rest of my cubes a bit smaller than the cubes shown above.

Tofu added to broth in the soup pot

Finally, add the tofu cubes to the hot broth and let them warm through. Theyโ€™ll absorb some of that super flavorful broth and get nice and tasty. At this point, you can add all of your sliced vegetables to the pot and let them get nice and tender, orโ€ฆ

Sliced fresh vegetables in Bowl

Divide the sliced vegetables into individual bowls, andโ€ฆ

Broth being ladled over vegetables in the soup bowl

Pour the hot broth right over the thinly sliced vegetables. The hot broth will soften the vegetables just a bit, leaving you with a very fresh and tasty soup.

Overhead view of a bowl full of hot and sour soup with vegetables and tofu. Garnished with a dab of chili garlic sauce.

Sprinkle a few of the sliced green onions over top and add more chili garlic sauce if you like it super hot!

A soup pot full of hot and sour soup with cubed tofu and vegetables, a wooden spoon in the center.

Or, just add all the vegetable to the pot and let them cook a little. Cooked red cabbage does lose itโ€™s nice vibrant color, so just keep in mind that it wonโ€™t be quite as pretty this way (but still just as delicious!).

If you find you have more sliced vegetables than you can use in the soup, switch it up one night and make them into a quick stir fry! Or, add them into your Dragon Noodles. :)

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Comments

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  1. Thanks for the recepie. I cooked the vegetables a little bit and added gochujang instead of chili sauce. Came out like Chinese version of Ukrainian borscht- the beets, but the color was the same.

  2. This was AMAZING! Recently made your french dip recipe (twice!) so I had the Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Base on hand and all the vegetables/tofu are staples in our house. Such a great, healthy, inexpensive recipe but so satisfying! Definitely going to make this on the regular. My fiance and I love your recipes. Weโ€™ve been trying out a new one every week and Iโ€™m yet to be disappointed.

  3. This one didnโ€™t turn out so great for me. I wonder if itโ€™s because I used a new (to me) vegetable broth.

  4. I made this for lunch today. In Vermont the weather has been โ€“ 10 or more and I was craving something hot and am sick of chicken noodle soup!
    The only thing I did different was use kitchen basics vegetable broth. I tripled the seasonings to my taste. It came out amazing I canโ€™t wait to look for more recipes!

  5. This is better than any we have had in a Chinese restaurant and we always order hot and sour soup. A bit different. Not as greasy (yay) and we could adjust the taste (yay) and it had a lot more vegetables. I could see other variations (shredded chicken for example) โ€ฆ. But the fresh ginger taste really added to the flavor. EXCELLENT.

  6. Doubled the ginger, soy, chilli, garlic, vinegar for extra zing! Delicious ๐Ÿ˜‹ 

  7. Itโ€™s been kind of chilly in the NYC area for May, so this was the perfect soup to make! I used a lot of vinegar and a lot of the chili garlic sauce because the more hot and sour the better!

  8. Not normally a comments person, but this is my favorite Budget Bytes recipe by far! Perfectly spicy and tangy and I even enjoyed the cooked vegetables (something I am normally very against). I bulked mine up with some rice noodles I had lying around in my pantryโ€”just added them at the end. Definitely saving this recipe for whenever I have cabbage leftover or whenever I get sick.

  9. Another 10 recipe from Budget Bytes, perfect winter soup. Itโ€™s 12 degrees out with a foot of snow having fallen in the past 8 hours, Budget Bytes Hot Sour veggie soup to the rescue.

    Easy to prepare, delicious and healthy to boot. What more can you ask? Well my wife whoโ€™s been very congested with a winter cold reported that the ginger/chili garlic rich broth cleared her right out.

  10. Iโ€™d never made a soup like this, and I usually struggle to enjoy tofu. This recipe was excellent, me and my partner loved it and will definitely be cooking it again. He said it reminded him of a soup the Phillipines so extra points for nostalgia :)

  11. I have the beginnings of a cold and made this tonight. It was a godsend! The ginger is perfect and the chile sauce really clears you out. It was also delicious! This will definitely become one of my go to recipes.

  12. This was delicious and so easy to make! I felt healthy eating it. The only difference I made was to make more broth. I love a soupy soup.