Chinese Flavored Sweet Soy Sauce (复制酱油)

Flavored sweet soy sauce is one of the things I picked up during my visit. It is a key ingredient in a lot of appetizers, noodles, and dumpling dishes. Namely, sweet water noodles, wontons in red oil, and Sichuan dumplings. Lately I’ve discovered that many Sichuan recipes online use a combination of soy sauce and sugar as a shortcut. That’s why you rarely see the term “sweet soy sauce” used in Sichuan cooking. But once you try the real-deal sweet soy sauce, there is no going back.

So what is Chinese-style flavored sweet soy sauce?

It is a very thick sauce made with soy sauce, sugar, aromatics, and spices for braising. The cooking process is extremely simple, and you simply need to add everything into a pot and cook the liquid down until it thickens.

The reasons we use flavored sweet soy sauce are:

• The cooked sugar gives the sauce a more rounded aroma that we cannot achieve with raw sugar.
• The sauce is very fragrant because it has a lot of herbs cooked into it.
• The sauce is very thick, which helps it coat the ingredients better.

As you might already know, many Sichuan cold dishes use a combination of homemade chili oil, aromatics, vinegar, and soy sauce to make a rich and scrumptious sauce that is numbing, spicy, and bursting with flavor. If you’re curious about how they could make such a thick sauce without using cornstarch, sweet soy sauce might be your answer.

Cooking notes

1. Choose the right soy sauce

Make sure you use the regular soy sauce. In fact, it is common practice in China to use the cheapest soy sauce you can find, because it will taste much better once we’ve finished cooking. Note, do NOT use light soy sauce, which yields a sauce that is too salty.

2. Aromatics and spices

It might look like a lot of ingredients. The truth is, the ingredients are quite flexible and the only key component is the sugar-to-soy-sauce ratio. I’ve seen many recipes online, and some use five spice powder to replace the dried spices. If you do not have a single spice, such as black cardamom or star anise pod, simply skip it. Alternatively, you can replace the last five ingredients (star anise, cinnamon, fennel seeds, cloves, and Cao Guo) with 1/2 teaspoon of five spice powder.

3. Storage

Once you finish cooking, store the sauce in an airtight jar in the fridge and it will last forever.

How to use

Sichuan Spicy Wontons in Red Oil

(More recipes will follow soon)

This recipe was adapted from this blog post with some small modifications.

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Chinese Flavored Sweet Soy Sauce (复制酱油)

By Maggie Zhu 4.72 from 7 votes Prep Time: 5 minutes minutesCook Time: 30 minutes minutesTotal Time: 35 minutes minutes Servings: 1 1/3 cup sauce0.5x1x2x3x Save RecipeSaved Recipe Print Learn to make the secret ingredient that will make your Sichuan food taste extra fragrant and authentic.

Ingredients

• 2 cups soy sauce
• 3/4 cup (150 g) brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (90 g) rock sugar (or granulated sugar)
• 1 big thumb ginger , coarsely chopped
• 6 green onions
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 star anise pod
• 1 small cinnamon stick
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 2 cloves
• 1 Cao Guo (or black cardamon)

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Instructions

• Add soy sauce into a small sauce pan. Heat over medium high heat until boiling.
• Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir and cook until the sugar completely dissolves and the liquid starts to simmer again.
• Turn to medium low heat. Simmer until the liquid is reduced to about two-thirds of the original volume, and the soy sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Check on the pan every 15 minutes. It could take anywhere from 30 minutes to more than one hour, depending on the heat and the pan you use. Remove the pan from the stove.
• Place a sieve over a heatproof airtight glass container or jar and pour in the soy sauce. Discard all the solid ingredients.
• Let the soy sauce cool completely. It is ready to use. Or you can store it covered in the fridge for a year.

Ingredient Substitution Guide

Nutrition

Serving: 1serving, Calories: 52kcal, Carbohydrates: 12g, Protein: 1.5g, Sodium: 1371mg, Fiber: 0.2g, Sugar: 10.5g

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