Chapter 7

Saucy Sauces and Dips

In This Chapter

Sauces for cooking

Dips for dipping

Recipes in This Chapter

All-Purpose Stir-Fry Sauce

Hot and Spicy Stir-Fry Sauce

Sweet and Sour Sauce

Master Sauce/Red-Cooking Sauce

All-Purpose Black Bean Sauce

All-Purpose Dipping Sauce

Chile Oil

Chinese Mustard Dip

Sichuan Spicy Salt

Y ou know the old saying, “the suit makes the man”? I think the better analogy is “the sauce makes the meal,” and it’s as true in Chinese cuisine as in French. But traditional Chinese sauces aren’t the complicated reductions or egg- and cream-thickened concoctions of classic French cooking, nor are they the hearty tomato-based ragus characteristic of Italian cuisine. Instead, the inventory of Chinese sauces and dips is based upon simple, yet flavorfully potent, combinations of basic seasonings and widely available bottled sauces.

In Chapter 4, I introduce you to many of those prepared sauces available in supermarkets and Chinese groceries. Most of these work wonders on their own — it doesn’t take much more than a spoonful of hoisin to bring Peking duck and Mandarin pancakes together in culinary harmony. Yet, by mixing that hoisin with fresh garlic, ginger, dried chili peppers, and any of a number of other flavorings, Chinese cooks build an elegant sauce with complex character. Now it’s your turn to do the same and experiment a little. You’ll be amazed at all the creative sauces and dips you can make with just a few basic building blocks.

And the beauty of most Chinese sauces and dips is that you can make them in quantity ahead of time and store them in tightly sealed containers in the refrigerator, where they’ll keep for weeks at a time. Whenever you want to add a little sweet-and-sour to your pork with peppers, you can have that sauce prepared and ready to go without a lot of last-minute kitchen confusion. The recipes and sidebars in this chapter give you plenty of ideas how.

Sauce Smarts

The entire strategy behind Chinese sauce making involves building a more complex sauce out of simpler elements. But achieving complexity of flavor while keeping the overall sauce balanced is key here. Just as in any other aspect of Chinese cuisine, when one flavor dominates all others — even if you really like that one flavor — you’ve missed the mark.

The following recipes guarantee that your Chinese sauces will hit the mark every time.

All-Purpose Stir-Fry Sauce

The culinary equivalent of a simple white shirt, this sauce goes with just about anything. Start with the basics — soy sauce, rice wine, and an honest broth — and add a little garlic, ginger, and sesame oil, and you have yourself a sauce that truly deserves the name “all-purpose.”

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Yield: About 1 3/4 cups

2/3 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup chicken broth

1/3 cup Chinese rice wine

3 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon minced ginger

2 tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water

1 In a bowl, combine the soy sauce, chicken broth, rice wine, sugar, sesame oil and white pepper.

2 Place a pan over high heat until hot. Add the cooking oil, swirling to coat the sides. Add the garlic and the ginger; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 15 seconds.

3 Add the mixture from Step 1; bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 1 minute. Add the cornstarch solution and cook, stirring, until the sauce boils and thickens.

Hot and Spicy Stir-Fry Sauce

Sometimes an all-purpose sauce needs a little bit of kick, and this variation of the standard all-purpose stir-fry sauce packs just such a wallop by way of two different types of pepper and a liberal dose of chile garlic sauce.

Be sure to taste your sauce as you make it. That way, you can put the brakes on the hot chile if it gets a little too racy for you.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 7 minutes

Yield: 1 1/2 cups

2/3 cup Chinese rice wine

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup chicken broth

3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions

1 1/2 tablespoons chile garlic sauce

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 1/2 tablespoons minced ginger

2 tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water

1 In a bowl, combine the rice wine, soy sauce, chicken broth, sugar, white pepper, green onions, and chile garlic sauce.

2 Place a wok or medium pan over high heat until hot. Add the cooking oil, swirling to coat the sides. Add the garlic and ginger; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the wine mixture, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the cornstarch solution and cook, stirring, until the sauce boils and thickens. Let cool.

Sweet and Sour Sauce

North America’s favorite Chinese restaurant sauce has finally come to your own kitchen. And when you make it yourself, you can control the sweet and sour flavors to the proportion that’s just right for your palate.

The sauce balances the flavors of any stir-fry, but it’s especially good at cutting the richness of batter-dipped meats and fish, as well as deep-fried appetizers such as egg rolls.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Yield: 2 cups

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup ketchup

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup orange juice

1/3 cup rice vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons crushed dried red chiles

2 tablespoons cooking oil

2 tablespoons minced ginger

1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 1/4 cup water

1 In a bowl, combine the water, ketchup, brown sugar, orange juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and dried chiles.

2 Place a medium pan over high heat until hot. Add the cooking oil, swirling to coat the sides. Add the minced ginger and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add the mixture from Step 1; bring to a boil and cook until the sugar dissolves. Add the cornstarch solution and cook, stirring, until the sauce boils and thickens.

Remember: Sweet and sour sauce wouldn’t be sweet and sour without an ample helping of acidic ingredients such as rice vinegar and orange juice. But any starch-thickened sauce becomes thin and watery if you add too much acid. So if you’re playing with proportions, don’t get out of hand when upping the sour. (For more tips on working with starch solutions in sauces, see the sidebar “Through thick and thin” in this chapter.)

Master Sauce/Red-Cooking Sauce

Like a well-seasoned wok, this richly flavored sauce that hails from eastern China gets better with each use, so don’t pour it down the drain after using it in a stew or a claypot casserole. Rather, strain it and store it in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator or freezer (the latter if you’d like to keep it longer) until you’re ready to red-cook again — and again, and again. Every item that you cook in it deepens and enriches the sauce with its own flavors. That’s my idea of sauce recycling!

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 23 minutes

Yield: About 3 1/2 cups

3 cups chicken broth

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup dark soy sauce

1/3 cup Chinese rice wine

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 whole star anise

2 pieces dried tangerine peel or 4 pieces fresh orange peel

2 tablespoons cooking oil

8 slices ginger

6 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 In a bowl, combine the chicken broth, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, rice wine, brown sugar, anise, and tangerine peel.

2 Place a medium pan over high heat until hot. Add the cooking oil, swirling to coat the sides. Add the ginger and garlic; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add the broth mixture; bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3 Stir in the sesame oil.

Remember: Some of the aromatics and fresh ingredients in a red-cooking sauce need replenishing now and again. The volatile flavors of dried tangerine peel, ginger, and garlic can “flash off,” or vaporize, during cooking. Taste your sauce each time; if it seems a bit weak, by all means add fresh ginger, onions, soy, or any other flavoring ingredient that could use some refreshing.

All-Purpose Black Bean Sauce

This is truly a sauce for all seasons — and a seasoning for just about every situation. Try it with pork ribs, meat dishes, vegetable stir-fries, and especially with seafood. When it comes to pairing black beans with the flavors of the sea, anyone who’s done any eating in Guangzhou can vouch that no match is more well seasoned.

Preparation time: 9 minutes

Yield: About 3/4 cup

2 tablespoons black bean garlic sauce

1 tablespoon chicken broth

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons sliced green onion

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 teaspoon minced garlic

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients; stir to mix well.

The power of pepper: White pepper in Chinese cuisine

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but substituting black pepper for white in a Chinese dish yields very different results. White pepper is actually more common than black in Chinese dishes, and without it, the cuisine loses some of its distinct character. Although using black pepper in lieu of white won’t ruin a recipe, it may rob it of that pungency-transcending, subtle warmth that only white pepper gives.

What makes white pepper so different from black? Both do come from the same tropical plant. But instead of being picked green and then sun-dried, as are the berries destined for black peppercorns, those destined for white pepper ripen on the tree until they turn red. Processors then ferment them and wash off their outer layer of skin.

Beware: Some processors make “white pepper” by mechanically removing the dark skins of black peppercorns. Don’t get fooled! This isn’t the real McCoy, and doesn’t have the same delicate fragrance and flavor as genuine white pepper. To tell the difference, look for the term “decorticated” on the label. If you find it, you’ve found the fake.

Through thick and thin

Getting a smooth, thick consistency out of a Chinese sauce depends on stove-top magicians called slurries. Slurries are bland solutions of starch — normally cornstarch, tapioca, arrowroot, or rice flour — mixed with about twice as much water, broth, or other liquid. Thoroughly stir one into a heating sauce, and in minutes, the mixture develops a rich, velvety texture. So how do slurries work their magic in the first place?

When you add a starch-and-water mixture to a sauce on the stove, the heat helps the starch granules absorb liquid. The more they heat, the more they absorb. The more they absorb, the more they swell. Eventually, the swollen granules burst, releasing the starch into the sauce where it does its thickening duty. Granules of different starches burst at specific temperatures, known as the gelation temperature. But you should start paying extra attention to a simmering sauce when it hovers near the boiling point — the ballpark temperature at which most starches hit their gelation temperatures.

As you approach the gelation temperature, the sauce may seem discouragingly thin. But resist the temptation to heat it violently or stir in more slurry because right when those granules burst, the sauce will thicken — I promise. And once it does, too much heat or starch solution will turn your silky sauce into glue. Just bring the sauce to a gentle boil and exercise patience, or you’ll end up with a gloppy mess that’s better suited to hanging wallpaper.

If you’re making a sauce ahead of time to store in the refrigerator, leave out the slurry until you begin the actual cooking process. Starch-thickened sauces turn into solid, even sliceable, gels as they cool, because the freed starch molecules that give the sauce body when warm collapse back in upon themselves — a process called retrogradation — when their motion slows at low temperatures. (Incidentally, the same process causes bread to stale.) Try reheating that jellied sauce on the stove, and it’ll “break” into a thin, separated, watery mess. The moral of the story: Don’t hurry the slurry.

Taking a Dip

The distinction between sauces, dips, oils, and dressings isn’t always very clear in Chinese cuisine — or in any cuisine, for that matter. But the recipes that follow all provide you with plenty of pleasing condiments that are great for appetizer-dunking or splashing onto stir-fries and salads. Give them a try, and you won’t let your food go naked again.

All-Purpose Dipping Sauce

Is it a sauce, or is it a dip? Who cares? When you have hoisin and Worcestershire sauces, ketchup, and two flavored oils contributing to this complex mixture, what you call it really doesn’t matter. Its thick consistency makes it heavenly for fried finger foods, giving it a number-one rank in my list of favorite dips.

To make chile oil for all-purpose dipping sauce, see the recipe later in the chapter.

Preparation time: 3 minutes

Yield: About 2 cups

1 cup ketchup

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

1/4 cup chicken broth

2 1/2 tablespoons sugar or honey

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons sesame oil

1 teaspoon chile oil

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well.

Chile Oil

Sure, you can buy chile oil at the grocery store or Asian market. But when you make it yourself, you control its heat and its freshness — a real plus, because chile sauces lose some of their flavor over time.

Keeping a bottle of this homemade chile sauce on hand for stir-fries, sauces, salad dressings, and dips saves you plenty of time. It even makes a mouth-watering dip on its own.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 1 minute

Yield: About 1 1/4 cups

1 cup cooking oil

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons crushed dried red chiles

2 teaspoons crushed garlic

Place a small pan over high heat until hot. Add the cooking oil for about 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the sesame oil, dried chiles, and garlic. Let stand overnight, strain out the seasonings, and then transfer to an airtight jar.

Chinese Mustard Dip

As sure as the Yangtze River flows to the East China Sea, an order of egg rolls will come with a little bowl of pungent Chinese mustard. Like sweet and sour sauce — another common egg roll accompaniment — Chinese mustard dip has a mild tartness that, along with the bite of the mustard itself, provides the perfect foil for deep-fried appetizers.

Preparation time: 7 minutes

Yield: About 3/4 cup

1/3 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup water

1 tablespoon sugar

3/4 cup dry mustard powder

2 tablespoons sesame oil

3/4 teaspoon cooking oil

In a small bowl, whisk all the ingredients to a smooth paste. Set aside for at least 1 hour before serving.

Martin Says: Like a fine wine, Chinese mustard improves with age. When you first mix up a batch, it may seem particularly sharp, a little bitter, and even powdery. But let it spend the night in a covered container in the fridge, and it will wake up mellowed, smooth, and ready to enhance the flavor of your egg rolls or fried wontons.

Sichuan Spicy Salt

Table salt will never seem the same after you taste some of this warm and spicy seasoned salt. Serve it in a bowl as a “dry dip” for chunks of roast chicken or the popular restaurant dish, salt and pepper prawns. The Chinese five-spice powder, Sichuan peppercorns, chiles, and white pepper that it contains lend just a subtle flavor and aroma, so it’s an excellent substitute for ordinary salt in recipes as well. Turn to Chapter 5 to find out how to toast the peppercorns.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Yield: About 1/3 cup

1/3 cup salt

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

3/4 teaspoon ground red chiles

1 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder

1 1/2 teaspoons ground toasted Sichuan peppercorns

Place a wok over medium heat until hot. Add all the ingredients. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Let cool.