Hoisin sauce is a thick, fragrant sauce commonly used in Cantonese cuisine as a glaze for meat, an addition to stir fry, or as dipping sauce. It is dark-coloured, sweet and salty. Although regional variants exist, hoisin sauce usually includes soybeans, fennel, red chili peppers, and garlic. Vinegar, five-spice powder, and sugar are also commonly added.
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The word hoisin is derived from the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese words for "seafood" (simplified Chinese: 海鲜; traditional Chinese: 海鮮; Cantonese Yale: hói sīn; pinyin: hǎixiān), although the sauce does not contain any seafood ingredients and is not commonly consumed with seafood.[1] The reason for the name is "seafood flavour", a common adjective in Chinese cuisine, especially Sichuanese ("fish fragrant").
Some hoisin sauce ingredients include starches such as sweet potato, wheat and rice, and water, sugar, soybeans, sesame seeds, white distilled vinegar, salt, garlic, red chili peppers, and sometimes preservativesorcoloring agents. Traditionally, hoisin sauce is made using toasted mashed soybeans.
In Vietnamese, hoisin sauce is called tương đen. It is a popular condiment for phở, a Vietnamese noodle soup, in southern Vietnam. The sauce can be directly added into a bowl of phở at the table, or it can be used as a dip for the meat of phở dishes. In phở, hoisin is typically accompanied by Sriracha sauceortương đỏ. The hoisin sauce is also used to make a dipping sauce for Vietnamese gỏi cuốn (often translated as 'summer roll') and other similar dishes. In cooking, it can be used for glazing broiled chicken.
