Five Asian Sauces That Will Make Everything Taste Better
As a child, I was obsessed with helping my mother cook. While she dabbled in cooking Italian food or sampling boxed ingredients that were popular at the time, most evenings consisted of what she knew best: giant pots of Thai comfort food and mountains of jasmine rice.
My childhood of special cooking classes taught me two things: Jasmine rice goes with everything, and anything can be delicious with one of five bottled Asian sauces. I’m assuming you already have your rice covered, so let me tell you about these sauces.
Fish sauce
This sauce gives you the most flavor bang for your buck. The thin, reddish-brown liquid is made by fermenting small fish such as anchovies with salt for two years. The juice extracted from the mixture is a hot sauce that imparts an umami kick to everything it touches. Add a few drops to enhance the flavor of your stir-fry, or use it as a main ingredient, such as in Thai som tum salad . For those new to making fish sauce, simply add a few drops to a hearty dish with many ingredients.
You’ll notice a difference in taste, but you won’t be overwhelmed by the fishy flavor. I don’t consider myself a fish head person and this sauce does taste like fermented fish, but somehow it just works. Fish sauce can be used during cooking or as a finishing sauce during meals. I like to add a few drops to hamburger meat or make us Jim with chili and chopped garlic to drizzle over eggs and rice; and Claire loves using it to make butter , tuna and chilli .
Whatever fish sauce you find will be the best, but if you have a choice, I like: Squid brand fish sauce.
Oyster sauce
The name may include another seafaring friend, but oyster sauce is completely different from fish sauce. There are several sauces that can be called “oyster sauce”, but in this case I’m talking about a dark brown sauce that is so thick that it is almost gelatinous. Oyster sauce is often made from oyster extracts, soy sauce and thickeners, and is both sweet and salty. Add a tablespoon of oyster sauce to enhance the flavor of the dish, or use a few tablespoons as the main ingredient in a sweet and tangy sauce. In the winter, I add oyster sauce to beef stew and use it to make a typical sticky glaze for chicken feet (ew) .
My favorite oyster sauce: May Croix oyster sauce.
Mushroom soy sauce
It may be easy to think of soy sauce as a simple salty condiment, but this liquid gold is as nuanced as wine. I usually keep at least three different types of soy sauce on hand because they each offer something different. And I need them. All of them.
Mushroom soy sauce can range from thin and medium brown to slightly viscous and almost black. Mushroom soy sauce is made from dried black mushrooms and light soy sauce, and while it doesn’t taste exactly like mushrooms, it tastes noticeably earthier than standard soy sauce. I use light brown mushroom soy sauce quite often in dishes, or in place of “regular” soy sauce. If I’m making turkey chili and want a salty, earthy flavor, I add it to add a little depth to the tomato base.
In my refrigerator I have: Dek Som Boon, also called Healthy Boy brand mushroom soy sauce.
Soy sauce with black mushrooms
Sometimes, if you already add fish sauce and regular soy sauce to a dish, you don’t necessarily need another salty ingredient. However, a teaspoon of black mushroom soy sauce gives the whole stir-fry a beautiful dark brown color with a touch of sweet, earthy umami and much less salt. This type of soy sauce still uses dried black mushrooms to add flavor, but the mushroom extracts are added to dark soy sauce rather than light soy sauce. Dark soy sauce is usually aged longer than light soy sauce, and some bottles may even contain molasses. I love Pearl River Bridge’s excellent Black Mushroom Soy Sauce for its dark color and sweet flavor. I add it (lightly!) to fried rice along with regular soy sauce and Golden Mountain sauce.
My pick: Pearl River Bridge’s excellent mushroom-flavored black soy sauce.
Golden mountain sauce
The four products I’ve mentioned so far are types of sauces, and you can explore different brands to find your favorite, but Golden Mountain Sauce is a brand of very special condiment sauce. The ingredient list consists of “soy sauce” made from soybeans, corn, water, sugar and salt. The taste is salty, malty, savory and slightly sweet. It’s incredibly flavorful and by far my favorite all-purpose sauce. There’s something about it that tastes like nothing else. Ideal with leftover egg and rice. (A small dose works, but when I was a kid I had to make sure there was a puddle of this sauce around every grain of rice.)
Golden Mountain sauce is great for frying, as a sauce for dumplings, and is a great addition to eggs, but you can sprinkle it on anything to enhance the flavor. If you can’t find Golden Mountain sauce, you can try the very similar Maggi seasoning, but watch your local Asian grocery stores for the real deal with the green and yellow label.
Or, of course, you can order: Golden Mountain Sauce.