Hoisin sauce
Hoisin sauce | |||||||||||||||||||||
Jiaozi with hoisin sauce | |||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 海鮮醬 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 海鲜酱 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | seafood sauce | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||||
Vietnamese | tương đen | ||||||||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | black sauce |
Hoisin sauce is a thick, fragrant sauce commonly used in Chinese cuisine as a glaze for meat, an addition to stir fries, or as dipping sauce. It is darkly colored in appearance and sweet and salty in taste. Although regional variants exist, hoisin sauce usually includes soy beans, fennel seeds, red chillies, and garlic. Vinegar, Chinese five spice and sugar are also commonly added. The word hoisin (海鮮, Cantonese: hoi2 sin1 Mandarin: hǎixiān) is Chinese for seafood, but the sauce does not contain any seafood ingredients.
Ingredients
Peking-style hoisin sauce ingredients include starches such as sweet potato, wheat and rice, and water, sugar, soybeans, sesame seeds, white distilled vinegar, salt, garlic, red chili peppers, and sometimes preservatives or coloring agents. Traditionally, hoisin sauce is made using toasted mashed soybeans. Despite the literal meaning, hoisin sauce does not contain seafood, nor is it typically used with it.
Regional
Chinese cuisine
Few Chinese cuisine dishes use this sauce. It is most commonly used in Cantonese cuisine as a flavoring for barbecued pork marinade, and also as a condiment for Peking duck.
Vietnamese cuisine
In Vietnamese, hoisin sauce is called "tương đen". It is a popular condiment for phở, a Vietnamese noodle soup, in southern Vietnam. The sauce can be directly added into a bowl of phở at the table, or it can be used as a dip for the meat of phở dishes. In phở, hoisin is typically accompanied by Sriracha sauce or "tương đỏ". The hoisin sauce is also used to make a dipping sauce for Vietnamese spring rolls and other dishes similar to spring and summer rolls. In cooking, it can be used for glazing broiled chicken.
See also
- Duck sauce
- List of dips
- List of Chinese sauces
- List of sauces
- Plum sauce
- Siu haau sauce, primary Chinese BBQ sauce
- Soy sauce
- Sweet and sour sauce