Oct 09
8

Mom’s Sweet and Sour Soup

3 Comments

Sweet and Sout Soup

My mom makes a killer Vietnamese Sweet and Sour Soup. It’s pretty much restaurant quality. Actually, it’s better than restaurant quality. She gave me the recipe a few years a go and I like to make it every once in a while because it’s mm-mm good. DB’s not a big soup person so he will usually have one small bowl while I finish off the rest of the pot by myself.

I made a small pot today to use up some of the recao (“nice-smelling-herb” or “sawtooth herb” or whatever it’s called) I bought at Sunflower the Thai market yesterday.  Slurping gooooood!

A while back, I was flipping through these two Vietnamese cookbooks and came upon their versions of this soup. Both recipes in each book called for the addition of tamarind pulp. So I thought I’d buy some tamarind and try it out. Another recipe also called for some lemongrass. I had some lemongrass in the freezer, so I tried throwing that in the pot too.

(Shaking head) I should never have messed with THE MOM RECIPE. Why did I have to spoil a good thing? I was hoping I could make what was great even greater but the soup that came out of the lemon grass and tamarind experiment not only tasted all wrong but made me sick. Real sick, if you know what I mean.

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Posted in food by sd-b 3 Comments

3 Responses to "Mom’s Sweet and Sour Soup"

  • Klara Scott says:
    October 17, 2009 at 3:22 am

    I was looking for your mom’s Vietnamese Sweet and Sour Soup recipe. In vain.

    Could you share it with me?

    Many thanks and lots of fun in Dubai.

    Klara

  • Khanhly says:
    May 8, 2010 at 10:12 pm

    oooh, can you please send me this mmmm–recipe?? thanks. btw, you write very well.

  • sd-b says:
    May 9, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    It’s a very simple and versatile recipe! You can add whatever veggies or meat/seafood you like. Unfortunately I don’t have exact measurements as I just throw things into the pot by eyeballing it. This is the version I usually make which serves 4 to 6 people:

    Ingredients:
    2 quarts water or chicken stock
    1 large tomato
    firm tofu
    okra
    cilantro or recao (2 leaves)
    bean sprouts
    6-8 large shrimp
    ½ lemon
    juice from 16 oz can pineapple and 3 pineapple rings
    1-2 Tb sugar
    5 Tb nuc nam
    salt if necessary + pepper
    hot pepper (sambal or thai bird chile)
    scallions for garnish
    Optional:
    Salmon (pan seared first) or 2 chicken legs
    Hot pepper

    Directions:
    Boil water, add chicken and boil for 8-10 min. Then add tomato and pineapple and simmer ~2 min. Add nuc nam, recao, sugar, tofu, chile and shrimp and simmer 1 to 2 min. Add okra and bean sprouts, cover and remove from heat. Let stand 5 minutes. Garnish with scallions and cilantro.

    If using salmon, sear first in an oiled pan and add to pot with the shrimp.

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