Hu La Tang
“Henan's morning soup: peppery broth thickened with starch, packed with beef tripe, vermicelli, peanuts, wood ear fungus, and dried daylily — eaten at every street cart from Zhoukou to Luohe at dawn.”
The bite
A bowl of glossy brown slurry, thick enough that the spoon stands briefly. White pepper hits the throat first — proper hu la tang makes you cough on the first sip. Tripe is silky, meat is in shreds, vermicelli slips, wood ear has snap. A swirl of black vinegar at the table cuts the pepper-heavy weight. Eaten with you tiao dunked into the soup until the dough turns brown. Cold weather makes it taste better.
Where it comes from
Henan's regional flag, dating to the Song dynasty (11th-12th c.) when Kaifeng was the capital and palace cooks made a peppery 'imperial soup' that bled into street food. The Zhoukou and Xiaoyao formats are the two main schools — Zhoukou hu la tang has more tripe, Xiaoyao is more pepper-forward. Eaten exclusively at breakfast (4-9 AM); a hu la tang stand serving lunch is considered fake. The 'hú' (胡) means foreign — referring to the white pepper, which arrived via Silk Road trade.
What makes it work
Sweet potato starch is the thickener of choice — its molecular structure produces a glossy, almost silky slurry rather than the cloudy gluey mass that cornstarch or wheat flour would. The slurry must be added at a precise moment: the soup must be at a rolling simmer (the starch needs to gelatinize) but not boiling hard (or the starch breaks down and the soup thins out again). The white pepper amount sounds insane — 40g for 1.5L — but is what gives hu la tang its identity. Half that and the dish tastes like a generic beef-and-vermicelli soup.
On the Palate
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
6 steps · Show ↓40 min active · 50 min waiting
How it's made
6 steps · Show ↓- 130 min
Soak 30g dried wood ear fungus, 30g dried daylily flowers, 50g sweet potato vermicelli in cold water for 30 minutes. Soak 100g flour with water 1 hour to make seitan (separate gluten by rinsing).
- 250 min
Simmer 300g beef tripe and 200g shoulder in water with star anise, cassia, fennel, ginger for 50 minutes until tender. Slice tripe thin, dice meat. Reserve 1.5L broth.
- 35 min
Bring broth to a boil. Add prepared tripe, beef, soaked vermicelli, wood ear, daylily, 50g blanched peanuts, the seitan torn into pieces. Simmer 5 minutes.
- 42 min
Season heavily with white pepper (40g — yes, 40g, this is the hú in hulatang), light soy, salt. Adjust to taste — should be aggressively peppery.
- 53 min
Whisk 80g sweet potato starch with 200ml cold water. Drizzle slowly into the simmering soup while stirring — soup thickens to a glossy slurry that coats a spoon.
- 60 min
Serve in bowls with a swirl of black vinegar, sesame oil, and fresh cilantro. Pair with you tiao (fried dough sticks) or shao bing flatbread for dipping.
