13 Chinese Sauces You NEED in Your Kitchen

Hey guys, what's going on? So this video, we're going to pick up where we left off, and we're going to talk about essential Chinese sauces that you must keep in your kitchen. Let's start off with these two right here. This is like the double whammy right here. Two soy sauces. You need two soy sauces. Some of you might be like, well, isn't a soy sauce just a soy sauce? No my friends, there are different types of soy sauces. Random fact, did you know that the soy sauce was actually invented by Buddhist monks? Anyway, although there are different types of soy sauces, you really need two kinds. One is light, and one is dark soy sauce. This is my favorite brand. This is Jinlan or Kinlan soy sauce. One thing I try to do when I go to Chinese grocery stores, and this is not any knock against my beloved country, and this is just fact, okay? I try to buy sauces that are not made in mainland China. I try to get them made in Taiwan or other countries, because in reality, there are just so many issues with packaged food items in China that I can't trust what they really put into them. If you don't believe me, go Google search China food scandals. Anyway, I like these soy sauces because there's no MSG in them, and the reason why you get light and dark soy sauce is because the light soy sauce is thinner and saltier than dark soy sauce, which also contain caramel, caramel. This is mainly used for its coloring. A lot of times in Chinese cooking, we'll use this instead of salt, because soy sauce actually brings out a very unique umami flavor, as the Japanese would say, or in Chinese, is xianwei. That's kind of the term that describes savory or meaty flavor. All right, next, let's talk about oyster sauce. What I love about oyster sauce is that it can make simple dishes taste awesome. First of all, this thing, like the name suggests, oyster sauce, you know, it's made with minced oysters and the oyster juice. So that's a little icky, but you know, it's briny, it's dark brown, it has a smooth consistency. And when I say that this makes really simple dishes taste amazing, if you just go and steam some vegetables and put this on it, your vegetables are going to taste really, really good. You can also put this on salads, on cold noodles. Next, uh, mi jiu, Chinese cooking wine. Really simple, what I use Chinese cooking wine for is to really get rid of the gaminess of the meat. If you don't have this, you can always kind of substitute it with dry sherry. The most famous Chinese rice wine is shaoxingjiu, which is something that's been aged for 10 years and it's something that you can drink and also cook with. All right, next, let's talk about haixianjia, or hoisin sauce. This is essentially Chinese barbecue sauce, and you can use it the same way you use barbecue sauce in the West. You can glaze your meat, you can marinate. Those of you who love Peking duck, this is what you can dip your Peking duck in. This thing is sweet, a little spicy, a little garlicky. It's crazy because it even has like sweet potatoes in here, and this is a great sauce to use as a dip. You can almost dip anything in here, like meat, noodles, vegetables. All right, this item is something that I burn through about a bottle every couple of weeks. This is Chinese black vinegar. This is the brand I typically get, is zhenjiang xiangcu. This is very different than the vinegar you'll find in the West. Typically in the West, the vinegar is very acidic. What you can kind of compare this to is malt vinegar. This is made from glutinous rice, and we use this a lot in soups, stews, use it for dipping. This really counteracts spice really well. So if you're cooking something and it's too spicy, you kind of want to counteract that. A little vinegar really helps. Also, this is something essential if you're eating dumplings. I mean, you cannot make dumpling dip without vinegar. And the next time you have a big bowl of beef noodle soup, add maybe a couple of tablespoons of vinegar into the soup, and add some hot oil if you like hot oil. That's going to make the soup even more flavorful. And I'll tell you a couple of other uses for Chinese vinegar. One is that in Shanxi, which is famous for Chinese vinegar, they actually make their vinegar a little differently. Some of the vinegar you can just outright drink. Also, what my parents used this for when I was a kid was that I would get like a fish bone stuck down my throat, and they would make me gulp this stuff. And what that does is it kind of like dissolves the bone a little bit, or makes it soft, and the bone will kind of wash down. This is another bottle of something I go through every couple of weeks, and this is my favorite brand. It's actually made in Japan. This is sesame oil, and there's so many uses for this oil. I use it in just about anything. My stir fries, towards the end, I splash just a little bit, maybe like a half a teaspoon or a teaspoon on. And that will give it such a nice, fragrant sesame flavor. This is also a must in basically every type of Chinese soups. So after your soup is cooked, drop a little bit of this in there. It's going to make the soup smell fantastic. One thing you don't want to do with this is you don't want to overheat it, because this does not have a high tolerance to heat, and you don't want to add too much, because this flavor is going to overwhelm a lot of other flavors. What I've been using this a lot in is that I make Korean barbecue at home, and all I do for the sauce is I take this, salt and pepper, and that's how I consume my meat, like by the pounds. This cute little baby here is one of my favorite things, and you're not going to find too many uses for this. This is Chinese barbecue sauce. It says barbecue sauce, sha cha jiang. There's really nothing barbecue-y about this. It's basically soybean oil with grilled fish and dried shrimp inside, and what people usually use this for sometimes is marinating their meats or as a soup base. Most of all, this is used as a sauce you make to dip your hot pot items in, and that's exclusively why I keep this thing around. You see the little size of this? This is part of my emergency hot pot kit. You know those days when it's snowing outside, it's freezing cold, you finally get home, you're drenched, you walk in the door, and all you want is a nice hot pot, but then you don't have the sauce, which is, you know, that's sad. So I always keep this around in case that particular scenario happens, which it has happened before. All right, next is dou ban jiang, or broad bean paste, in this case soybean paste, because sometimes they use soybeans, and this particular brand uses both broad beans and soybeans, and this has been described as the soul of Sichuan cooking. So a lot of Sichuan dishes you run into, like the mapo tofu video recipe I just did, utilizes dou ban jiang. This sauce is so flavorful. You know what people sometimes do? All they do is heat up this sauce with some oil, and they'll eat it with rice, and that will literally transform your rice. So it's really handy to have around when you don't have a lot of food at home. So if you're like me, and you always have a big bag of rice laying around, and if you have this, then that's a meal. This also goes really good with instant noodles, so next time throw away that seasoning pack and just add a little bit of this. All right, the next item people usually love or hate, and I love, this is fermented tofu, doufu rou, and there's a few ways I like to utilize this thing. One is I like to cook this with leafy greens, gives it a really nice flavor, and also this goes well if you want to make a hot pot sauce, dipping sauce, this goes well in that. But what most people probably use this the most is as a condiment for their rice dishes. So you have a bowl of rice, you have some dishes, and you put a piece of this into your rice because this has a really creamy texture, and it's uber salty. And that's why it blends really well with the rice. And I bought this one which is soaked in hot oil, so it's gonna be salty and spicy. But I always like to keep this around because I'm a rice eater. I don't know how many of you guys out there are rice eaters, and sometimes I run into the scenario where I have a lot of rice, but I don't have a lot of the dish, and that's where this really comes in handy. Next we have sesame paste. If peanut butter had an Asian cousin, this would be it. It's basically the same texture as peanut butter. It goes on, has kind of the same consistency, and technically you could put this on a sandwich. I know some people do. This sauce is utilized a lot if you love sesame peanut noodles or cold noodles. And you can also make all sorts of dips with this sauce, especially for your scallion pancakes and your hot pot. Okay, next, one of my favorite sauces, black bean sauce. If you watched my video on Mapa Tofu, we utilized black bean sauce in there. Not the same kind. This is one with garlic. These are really salty, fermented black beans, and they are heavenly. You know how people always say, hey, that shirt really brings out your eyes. Well, this sauce really brings out the flavor of any meat it touches. So whatever your stir-frying, pork, chicken, beef, trust me guys, add a little onion, add a little green pepper, add some of this. It's gonna make that dish taste amazing. And again, because this is pretty salty, you can basically omit salt in those dishes that utilizes this. And finally, last, but definitely, definitely not least, because it's my favorite thing in the world, and it's in a really cute cat mug. Yeah, you like that? Hot oil. Ooh, look at that. Can you see? Ah. I told you guys in the Chinese grocery store video that you should not buy hot oil in Chinese markets because a lot of it could be just food coloring. You don't know what's inside of that. It's really simple to make. That's why I keep my chili powder on hand. I can make this anytime I need. Oh, it smells so amazing. Just that one sniff made my mouth water. And hot oil, you guys see all my videos. This can go on basically anything, like anything except for like sweet stuff. But even sweet stuff, sometimes you want a little sweet and spicy, but really, you shouldn't add this on sweet stuff. Or you can. Up to you. So there you go, guys. In human terms, these are my immediate family, the one you care the most about. So I make sure to always at least stock up on what you see here in my kitchen. And with these essential ingredients, I can basically make anything taste, you know, halfway decent or pretty darn good. And I know some of these might not be considered sauce, like, okay, rice wine, that's not really a sauce. Fermented tofu, that's not really a sauce. Sesame oil, vinegar, but I'm going to include it anyway. So guys, I'm going to put all this stuff in my description box. So the next time you go to a Chinese supermarket, definitely try to collect all of this. And then what I've also done is I found some of these items on Amazon. So I included the Amazon link down there for you so you can buy it online, because I know a lot of you guys don't have access to Chinese supermarkets. And of course, in this video, I'm only talking about Chinese sauces. Of course, there's like other Asian sauces that are really awesome, like sriracha, fish sauce. Those are all really good to have as well. All right, guys, group hug. Thanks for watching. I'll see you later.