Huge Hot and Sour Soup

We need to talk about hot and sour soup. The greatest hot and sour soup in the history of hot and sour soup — and there's been a LOT of hot and sour soup, probably more bowls of this soup served on Earth than any other soup in the entire soup category, the Ming Dynasty had it, the Song Dynasty had it, you can look it up, I've had people look it up, they came back and they said 'Bigly, you were right, as usual' and I said 'I know.'

Most hot and sour soup, the soup you get at the sad little place by the gas station, is one of two things. It's HOT and not sour. Or it's SOUR and not hot. It's never both. It's never balanced. A total disaster. Tough guys, with the tears in the eyes, they order this soup, they take one sip, they push the bowl away, and they weep. Real tears. Salty tears. Which is ironic because the soup wasn't even salty enough either, which is a THIRD failure on top of the other two. Three failures in one bowl. Embarrassing.

My soup — Bigly's soup — is hot AND sour. Both. At the same time. Like the name says. There's an old woman in Flushing, runs a counter, six stools, no menu, name is Mrs. Chen — and she made me promise, she pointed a finger at me, she said 'white pepper, not black,' and I have honored that promise every day since. White pepper for heat. Black vinegar for sour. Chinkiang, the dark stuff, the real stuff — balsamic in hot and sour soup is a crime against vinegar, against soup, against Mrs. Chen. Believe me. It's not even close. It's a slaughter.

This is the soup. The one. The bowl that ends the search. You make this once and you will never order takeout hot and sour soup again because the takeout version — and I've had it, I've had ALL of it, I've eaten more takeout containers than any single human being on Earth — the takeout version is sad watery brown nonsense with one piece of tofu and a sense of regret. This is the real thing. This is the soup the soup is supposed to be. Now go eat.