What is Chinese Brown Sauce Made Of?
Brown sauce: the beloved basic in every Chinese take-out joint in America. But what's in it? It seems like there's a different recipe wherever you look—for example, compare the recipes found at Eat Close to Home, Epicurious, and Rasa Malaysia. Besides the requisite soy sauce and oyster sauce, I found variations including beef broth, corn starch, potato flour, Hoisin sauce, ketchup, and, oh, about five hundred other ingredients. At food blog The Heavy Table, Kelly Hailstone tries to find out what brown sauce is made of by calling local Chinese restaurants, but finds no answers. Even her own mother, a native of Hong Kong, wouldn't tell her.
I'm not really looking for the authentic stuff here, just the sauce I find on my $5 lunch special from Monday to Friday. Has anyone ever figured out what's exactly in this generic binder of chicken and broccoli?
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30 Comments:
When I make my own (and it generally comes out tasting pretty damn close), I use: soy sauce, mirin, minced garlic, honey, sesame oil, and cornstarch as needed.
valerie222 at 9:14PM on 07/01/09
I usually do 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup chicken broth, a couple cloves on minced garlic, and 2 tsp or so of arrowroot or cornstarch.
tideandthyme at 10:08PM on 07/01/09
well your recipes don't sound TOO scarey!
pooch at 10:47PM on 07/01/09
I'm always reminded of the answer I overheard at the Wong Kei in London when asked about its ingredients: "It's brown. It's sauce."
Amandarama at 11:23PM on 07/01/09
I'm sure there is hoisin and oil in the mixture but I can't seem to get it perfected.
DCLSweetspot at 11:29PM on 07/01/09
It's a mix of soya and oh, yah, "brown". Is it the same "brown" in English brown sauce? Best not to ask...
rheogs at 12:18AM on 07/02/09
Just try different combination and ration of ingredients you already have, the base is comprised of mostly soy sauce, sugar, oyster sauce, broth, rice wine and a bit of cornstarch. or at least the version I make at home does. but try add different stuff to get the taste you're familiar with. Just experiment and taste to adjust to your likings
mochateri at 12:34AM on 07/02/09
I work at a few chinese restaurants when I was a little younger. "brown sauce" is basically a play on watered(brothed, more accurately)-down soy sauce.
The Chinese restaurants I worked at would pre-combine at least a 5-gallon bucket of it at a time. It starts out with 1/3 Kikkoman soy sauce and 2/3 chicken stock. Between a cup and a pint of sugar and MSG (or a substitute) is added to each 5 gallon bucket along with about a cup of minced garlic. That should give you a good place to start and I don't recall it having any other ingredients (I didn't cook nor make the sauce, but being a food fan at heart, I would watch the cooks make it).
When they actually cook up the dish, pre-mixed brown sauce is heated up and thickened with corn or potato starch.
claypot at 5:03AM on 07/02/09
...Oh and I left out a pint of rice wine in the base recipe, thought there was something else.
claypot at 5:05AM on 07/02/09
Serious question: I admit to enjoying egg fu yung sometimes. Some restaurants top it with the standard brown sauce being discussed here, others with something lighter brown in color and kind of resembling a milk gravy. I much prefer the latter. Anybody know how to make it?
ChloeA at 8:33AM on 07/02/09
Valerie's recipe is close to what we use, and seems to be spot-on.
falnfenix at 9:48AM on 07/02/09
I make mine with soy, hoisin sauce, cornstarch, chickenbroth.
CATERPILLARGIRL at 10:18AM on 07/02/09
SUCH a good question, and i'm so happy that there are really good answers listed here. In a similar vein, does anyone know what's in the white sauce (usually used in lighter dishes with shrimp and vegetables)???
mh330 at 10:35AM on 07/02/09
My mom taught me it's soy sauce, garlic, cornstarch slurry to thicken. Very simple. Sometimes I add other stuff to mix it up.
@ mh330 - it's just cornstarch slurry added to the juices of whatever dish as it's cooking.
feistyfoodie at 10:57AM on 07/02/09
I hope this clears things up a bit:
"GLOP: A versatile substance with a pivotal role in the cuisine known as
Chinese-American, where it functions as a binding, flavoring, and
lubricating agent all in one. Not a juice, not a sauce, not a gravy,
not a starch, and not quite an emulsion, it becomes an element of
presentation with the addition of red food coloring."
from The Devil's Food Dictionary: A Pioneering Culinary Reference Work Consisting Entirely of Lies (Frogchart Press)
Barry Foy at 11:18AM on 07/02/09
You're all wrong. It's crack, only savorier.
wookie at 2:14PM on 07/02/09
Mine is very similar to tideandthyme's! I just do two parts broth to one part soy sauce (low sodium for me, though), lots of minced garlic, and 1 TB of cornstarch mixed with a few drops of water. If I feel like spicing it up I'll add Sriracha (so incredible); to make it a little sweeter I'll add some honey or apple/orange juice, whatever I have on hand. But I think that base is pretty versatile.
thuscwspake at 2:23PM on 07/02/09
As with most Asian food that I consume, ignorance is really bliss. I don't know what it is, but if I'm still alive, please don't tell me (and yes, I am from Southeast Asia, so this isn't a racist statement).
AnnieNT at 4:16PM on 07/02/09
Good to know that that sauce probably isn't vegetarian!
AnaPowell at 6:33PM on 07/02/09
I want to thank you for this post - I was just wondering this the other day!
CooksForOne at 12:02AM on 07/03/09
@wookie- Amen! I'm also pretty sure that those little Chinese donuts are also laced with crack...only sweeter and greasier
thehostess at 12:35AM on 07/03/09
@ wookie...."savorier"....somehow I know exactly what you you mean.
kathyvegas at 1:12AM on 07/04/09
I use DARK soy - more accurately - Mushroom Soy - in my "brown" sauce.
It's darker and richer and we like the flavor of it. I took a class - a lot of years ago - from Ken Hom and he introduced us to a lot of ingreients that I hadn't used before.
suegsf at 3:39AM on 07/05/09
I forgot one other item - several people mentioned using chicken stock - I use homemade beef stock made with carmelized onionis and roasted garlic as well as the mushroom soy.....
suegsf at 4:09AM on 07/05/09
@AnaPowell I generally assume that brown foods, when ordered in restaurants, aren't vegetarian.
piccola at 10:30PM on 07/05/09
white pepper is in there.
seikel at 9:09AM on 07/06/09
Hi Grace - thanks for linking to me. I checked out the other recipes, and will tell you that beef broth is definitely not in the typical Chinese brown sauce because Chinese restaurants don't usually have beef broth. What they might use is chicken broth or stock. Other than that, it's pretty much soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, starch, some sesame oil, some white pepper, and Chinese rice wine depending on the dish. Dark soy sauce might be added too if you want color. Do check out my recipe and see if you like it. :)
rasamalaysia at 10:53PM on 07/07/09
All of these recipes sound so professional! I'm not sure if the $5 special uses anything exotic, though. Soy sauce, cornstarch, some kind of oil, and definitely garlic.
There was a place that I used to eat at on 7th Avenue and 30-something Street in NYC (they've since closed). Their brown sauce was the most addictive. I used to buy some on Friday nights to take home and eat on Saturday.
Their brown sauce probably had a Herculean amount of MSG in it. Whenever you ate there your heartbeat would race, you'd be agitated easily, and your energy level would increase. I ate there for a month straight one time and had to withdraw myself slowly.
Scott
the active daddy at 4:27PM on 07/08/09
I'm so trying this tonight!! Thank you all you guys!
Chocolatesa at 5:13PM on 07/08/09
I just made my own version based off of Claypot's version, and it turned out really well!!
1/2 cup Kikkoman soy sauce
1 1/2 cup vegetable broth
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp garlic salt
2 tbps (rounded) flour
I just heated up the broth and soy sauce, added everything except for the flour, and then slowly added the flour bit by bit while whisking quickly and kept whisking till it thickened. Even my (picky) husband liked it!!! Now I'm gonna put it on my veggie and seafood stir-fry :D
Chocolatesa at 8:37PM on 07/08/09