Seafood sauce has quickly become one of my favorite homemade sauces. Our homemade hoisin sauce tastes much better than the ones bought in the store! Use this incredible sauce in stir-fry, marinade and glaze.
Store-buying hoisin tends to be too salty, too sweet and disappointingly thick. Our homemade hoisin sauce recipe tastes sweet, salty, rich and downright delicious. Use this umami-rich sauce for chicken, salmon, ribs, tofu and vegetables.
Since perfecting this recipe, we have explored many ways to use it. So far, we have used it to make glazed salmon, throw it away with tofu, and use it for Hoisin sticky ribs. We also like to make these lettuce wraps with this sauce.
Key Ingredients
- Garlic, ginger and scallion: Add fresh flavor to our sauce. I especially like the ginger in this homemade sauce.
- Tamari sauce or soy sauce: Our sauce is salty and salty. Tamari has a light taste cleaner, but the light soy sauce works well.
- Maple Syrup and Molasses: Sweet our sauce and balance out the salty tortillas.
- Peanut Butter: Complicate the taste of Hoisin. However, the finished sauce doesn’t taste like peanut butter. You can substitute sesame paste or almond butter.
- gochujang: Replicate the complex flavor of fermented beans in traditional hoisin sauce. For alternatives, use a miso sauce and add a little bit of your favorite hot sauce for optional calories. We also use Gochujang when making simple shrimp marinated.
- Rice wine vinegar: Only a little vinegar can brighten the sauce and blend all the flavors together.
- Chinese five spices: A warm and fragrant mixture of stellar anise, anise, szechuan chili, cloves and cinnamon. Look for this in the spice aisle of most grocery stores.
- Corn starch: Thick sauce (optional, but recommended).
How to make hoisin sauce
Making hoisin sauce at home only takes about 15 minutes. You need a small pot, spoon or stir.
To do this, sauté the fresh garlic, ginger and scallions until tender, then stir all items on the ingredients list. The peanut butter melts into the sauce and the garlic and ginger perfume tastes great. It has a strong flavor.
Our recipes include corn starch, which helps thicken the sauce. You can stick with our recommended amounts or add more to make it thicker. (As in writing, seafood protein is slightly thinner than what you buy in the store.)
We made this recipe with chef Richard Hattaway and I’m happy. This seafood sauce makes weekend dinner so easy. Whenever I have something like chicken or tofu in the fridge and don’t know what to do, I can get this sauce. Throw away any sauce and baking you in the refrigerator. Simple!
hoisin sauce (better than store-bought)
-
Prepare
-
chef
-
All
Hoisin sauce is a thick, delicious condiment that is popular in Chinese cuisine, especially in Cantonese cooking. It is added to stir-fry, marinade and glaze (think Beijing duck!). I found the store-bought hoisin sauce was too sweet, salty and thick. After trying this homemade Hoisin sauce recipe, you won’t have to buy it from the store again.
Make 1 cup
Watch us make recipes
You will need
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
2 cloves and garlic, chopped or grated
A 1-inch thumb-sized fresh ginger, finely minced or grated
2 green onions, white and light green parts, chopped
5 tablespoons (65g) shallow tortillas or shallow soy sauce, and more flavors
5 tablespoons (65g) pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons (30g) mosquito
1 tablespoon (20g) peanut butter, try homemade peanut butter
1½ teaspoon gochujang, see notes
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon Chinese five spices, see notes
1/4 teaspoon corn starch
direction
1Heat sesame oil in a small pot over medium heat. Stir in garlic, ginger and scallion. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender and translucent. Set the pan aside to cool.
2Stir in soy sauce, maple syrup, molasses, peanut butter, gochujang, rice wine vinegar and five Chinese spices. Return the pan to medium heat and slowly cook while stirring. Taste the sauce when necessary and adjust with 1/2 tablespoon to 1 tablespoon soy sauce.
3Make corn starch slurry by mixing 1/2 teaspoon corn starch with 2 teaspoon water. Stir the slurry into the sauce. When it fades, the sauce thickens. Once thickened, remove it from the heat and cool it. Refrigerate homemade hoisin sauce for up to a month.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- storage: Homemade hoisin sauce can be refrigerated for up to 1 month. When it sits, it may separate. We store the seasoning in an airtight glass jar, which allows us to shake it to combine before using it. The sauce freezes well too. Keep it in a freezer-safe container in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.
- gochujang: Gochujang is a spicy Korean condiment made with rice and fermented soybeans. Replace with miso sauce, if you want to add some spices, add a little hot sauce or chili sauce like Sambal Oelek.
- To suit your taste: Feel free to adjust the spice level, saltiness and sweetness to your taste. I like the calories of Gochujang, but you can substitute it with a fo o sauce if you want.
- Thickness of seasoning: I like to keep it on the thinner side, which makes it spicy when throwing it into the stir fry or applying it to the ribs. Add thick sauce to corn starch.
- gluten free: Double check that all products are gluten-free seafood sauces are marked gluten-free (especially soy sauce or tamari).
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
Nutrition per serving
Service size
2 tablespoons
/
Calories
86
/
Total fat
2.8 grams
/
Saturated fat
0.5g
/
cholesterol
0mg
/
sodium
290mg
/
carbohydrate
14.8 grams
/
fiber
0.3g
/
Total sugar
12.3g
/
protein
1.3 g
We are Adam and Joanne, a couple who are passionate about cooking and sharing delicious, reliable recipes since 2009. Our goal? Inspire you to enter the kitchen and cook fresh and delicious meals confidently.
