Hoisin Dipping Sauce

From Chinese takeout and eating out at restaurants, you are likely familiar with this sauce. From appetizers such as spring rolls and lettuce wraps, to chicken, duck, shrimp, pork belly, or potstickers, there is hardly any Chinese dish that do not taste good with hoisin dipping sauce. Here’s a recipe to make your own hoisin dipping sauce from scratch. If you like to cook Asian dishes at home, chances are that you have all the ingredients in your pantry already. 

The sauce takes a mere 10 minutes to make but with most dipping sauces, it tastes best if the flavors are allowed to meld for 1 hour before serving. 

The key ingredient is in this sauce is hoisin sauce, sometimes called Chinese barbecue sauce. It is a fragrant, pungent sauce used frequently in Asian vegetable stir-fry dishes and marinades as well as Asian-style grilled dishes. Made from a combination of soy, garlic, vinegar, and usually chili and sweetener, hoisin is dark in color and thick in consistency. It has a very strong salty and slightly sweet flavor. Because if its high sugar content, the sauce is perfect for glazing meat. 

If you are sensitive to gluten, carefully read the label to make sure it does not contain wheat, as not all brands of hoisin sauce are gluten free. Some brands offer regular and gluten-free hoisin sauce. In addition you can also buy garlic hoisin sauce, which you can use instead of regular hoisin sauce but in that case you might want to use less garlic, or no garlic to prevent the dipping sauce from turning too garlicky. 

The sesame oil used in this sauce is plain sesame oil from raw sesame seeds, which unlike toasted sesame oil, is light in color and has a neutral flavor. The soy sauce should be dark soy sauce, which is thicker, less salty, and sweeter than light soy sauce.

The sauce keeps it in the fridge for three to four days, and even longer. While the sauce ingredients are not perishable and the sauce won’t turn bad if you keep it for longer, the garlic flavor might get unpleasantly pungent after more than one week.