At one time, Ancient China was one of the places where philosophical thought first arose. To this day, much in the life of the Chinese is imbued with this thought. Even the process of eating food actually has a deeper meaning. The food here is often associated with the female Yin, and the sauce - with the male Yang. Food, picking up with chopsticks, must be dipped into the sauce and only then sent to the mouth. In this way, a kind of harmony is achieved. Therefore, it is impossible to imagine Chinese cuisine without sauces. Chinese sauce is a unique culinary phenomenon. It has a specific sweet-salty taste, no matter what recipe is prepared. It goes well with meat, especially pork, fish and seafood, poultry, rice. Despite the fact that the taste of Chinese sauce is not quite common for our compatriots, many people love it and always have it in their fridge.
Cooking Features
High-quality Chinese sauce for a small amount of money is not always possible to buy, so the desire to learn how to make Chinese sauce at home is understandable. It is quite realistic: most of the Chinese sauces are easy to prepare and of the available ingredients. The main thing is to know the recipes and cooking principles.
- Often in the original recipes of Chinese sauce you can find the names of ingredients that are rarely on sale, it is especially difficult to get them to residents of provincial cities. This is absolutely not scary: as a rule, all of them, without prejudice to the taste of the sauce, can be replaced with similar products available commercially. For example, rice vinegar can be replaced by apple, tofu - cream cheese, rapeseed oil - sunflower or corn, rice wine - regular grape.
- Often, Chinese sauce is required to thicken. This is done most often with the help of starch. At the same time you need to know that the starch is not added undiluted, as in this case unpleasant lumps are formed. Before adding to the sauce, starch must be diluted with water, necessarily cold.
- Sauces prepared on the basis of starch, when cooled, thicken strongly, turning into a gel-like mass. For this reason, you should not thicken them too much, and lay out better in containers with a wide neck.
- Most Chinese sauces can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three months. To do this, lay the sauce on sterilized glass jars and seal them tightly.
Chinese sauces are quite diverse, and the technology of their preparation, depending on the recipe chosen, can vary considerably. Therefore, the instructions accompanying a particular recipe, it is desirable to study carefully.
Spicy Chinese Sauce
Composition:
- rice vinegar (6 percent) - 40 ml;
- soy sauce - 40 ml;
- rice wine - 40 ml;
- spicy bean paste - 100 g;
- honey - 5 ml;
- rapeseed oil - 40 ml;
- chili pepper - 2 pcs .;
- corn starch - 5 g;
- crushed ginger - 20 g;
- garlic - 4 cloves;
- tofu - 100 g;
- sweet pepper - 100 g;
- shallots - 50 g;
- water - 20 ml.
Method of preparation:
- Mix the vinegar, wine and soy sauce.
- Add melted honey.
- Dilute the bean paste to the mixture. You can cook it yourself by boiling the beans to softness, adding spicy seasonings to them and grinding them all in a blender.
- Heat the rapeseed oil in a bowl with a thick bottom, place the chili peppers in it and fry them.
- Take out the peppers, throw them away, in their place put the chopped sweet pepper and tofu, fry them.
- Finely chop the onion.
- Crush garlic in a mortar.
- Combine all ingredients except water and starch. Heat them on low heat or water bath.
- Dissolve the starch and put it in the sauce. Stir and remove from heat.
Serve the sauce cold. It goes well with meat and fish.
Sweet & Sour Chinese Sauce
Composition:
- onions - 100 g;
- fruit juice (apple, orange, plum) - 125 ml;
- soy sauce - 40 ml;
- sugar - 40 g;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- rice vinegar (6 percent) - 20 ml;
- vegetable oil - 60 ml;
- starch - 20 g;
- ginger root - 30 g;
- ketchup - 40 ml;
- water - 40 ml.
Method of preparation:
- Peel the onions from the husk and chop finely.
- Peel and chop ginger root with a knife.
- Finely chop the garlic with a knife.
- Dissolve starch in cold water.
- Mix fruit juice with vinegar and soy sauce.
- Heat oil in a pan. Fry onion, garlic, and ginger alternately. Put them all together and fill with liquid mixture.
- Let the sauce boil for 2-3 minutes, then pour the diluted starch into it.
- Continue cooking until the sauce has the desired consistency.
Sweet and sour sauce prepared according to this recipe is universal. It fits to any dish that can be found in Chinese cuisine.
Spicy sweet and sour sauce with pickles
Composition:
- pickles - 0, 3 kg;
- vegetable oil - 20 ml;
- potato starch - 40 g;
- wine vinegar (6%) - 10 ml;
- cognac - 10 ml;
- water - 50 ml;
- grated ginger - 20 g;
- tomato paste - 5 ml;
- sugar - 10 g.
Method of preparation:
- Cucumbers finely chopped.
- Dissolve starch with a mixture of water, vinegar and cognac.
- Add grated ginger and sugar to tomato paste.
- Heat oil in a frying pan and place cucumber slices in it. Cook them for 5 minutes.
- Add tomato paste, mix. Extinguish 2-3 minutes.
- Pour in the liquid mixture with starch, immediately stir vigorously. Still stirring, cook the sauce for another 5 minutes.
Despite the fact that the sauce consists of ingredients that are widely used in Russian cuisine, its taste for many of our compatriots at first will seem unusual. However, experience shows that they get used to this sauce very quickly. The salty taste peculiar to Chinese sauces is given not to soy sauce, but to cucumbers. An important point: cucumbers for sauce need salted, not pickled.
Chinese sauce cooker
Composition:
- soy sauce - 0, 2 l;
- garlic - 5 cloves;
- parsley - 100 g;
- ground red pepper (hot) - a pinch;
- ground coriander - 10 g;
- black ground pepper - 5 g;
- sugar - 20 g;
- Acetic essence (70 percent) - 10 ml.
Method of preparation:
- Chop the garlic by crushing it with a hand press.
- Wash the parsley. Drain it, finely chop with a knife.
- Mix dry spices and sugar with each other. If you have coriander seeds, they need to grind. Sugar is also best grinded in a coffee grinder to the state of powdered sugar.
- Stir in a dry mixture with chopped greens and garlic using a blender.
- Dilute the vinegar essence with soy sauce and pour the rest of the ingredients into the resulting solution, mix well.
Before serving the sauce to the table, it should be allowed to brew in a cool place for at least one hour. Served with meat and fish sauce. It can be used as a marinade, as well as salad dressing.
Chinese sauces have a specific taste, but they quickly get used to it. As a result, savory sauces prepared according to Chinese recipes can become indispensable assistants to the hostess, completely transforming the taste of ordinary dishes. An additional advantage of such seasonings is the simplicity of their preparation and a rather long shelf life.
