100 Ways To Drool | Savory breakfast, Chinese style: Henan Hulatang

Ang Li & Maggie Cheng & Hao Li

The spicy soup is a traditional snack in Luoyang, Central China's Henan Province, and one of the most popular breakfast choices in the city. It contains beef, mutton, or pork, with gluten, vermicelli, shallots, ginger, and eggs, and adds many other ingredients, such as starch, pepper powder, spicy powder, salt, cooking wine, chicken essence, thick bone soup, vinegar, and sesame oil. However, the vegetables in the soup differ from one restaurant to another. In winter, a bowl of hot spicy soup will keep you warm.

Hulatang is a successful example of the natural blending of various ingredients, which embodies the traditional Chinese culture of tolerance, harmony, and balance. A simple bowl of Hulatang may not look delicate and exquisite, but it is spicy and sour, and the rich, spicy aroma has become the most profound hometown sentiment of Henan people's taste buds.