Chinese white sauce is a mild stir-fry base in many Chinese meat and vegetable dishes. It's a light gravy with a subtle saltiness that adds umami to vegetables, meat and seafood without overpowering them. As it allows the natural flavours of fresh ingredients to shine, it's a great base sauce.
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Ingredients
For our Chinese white sauce recipe, you'll need the following ingredients:
- chicken stock
- ginger
- garlic
- cornstarch
- Shaoxing wine
- sesame oil
The main flavours of Chinese white sauce come from two key ingredients: garlic and ginger.
We usually use instant chicken stock powder to make chicken broth. The ratio we use is 1 teaspoon of chicken stock powder mixed with 1 cup (about 250 ml) of hot water to make 1 cup of chicken broth. You can replace chicken stock with vegetable stock if you prefer to make it vegetarian-friendly.
If you can find Chinese rice wine or Shaoxing wine, you can mix the wine with the stir fry base. It helps to add a refreshing sweetness to the white sauce.
Sesame oil is great for improving base mix. Just a little bit is enough to add a nutty flavour.
If you don't have cornstarch, you can substitute it with corn flour or potato starch. On a gluten-free diet, you can also replace the regular version with gluten-free oyster sauce.
Chinese White Sauce Recipe | Stir Fry Sauce
Ingredients
- 750 ml chicken stock
- 3 ½ tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 4 clove garlic minced
- ½ inch ginger grated
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon sugar
Instructions
- Place ¼ of the stock in a small bowl. Mix with cornstarch to make a slurry, then set it aside.
- Mix the remaining stock with the Shaoxing wine. Preheat your wok over low heat. Then, add the toasted sesame oil, garlic, ginger, salt, and sugar. Continue to stir these ingredients while heating over medium-high heat.
- When your mixture boils, drizzle in the cornstarch slurry while stirring. Keep stirring the mixture until the gravy turns clear. It will become translucent as it cooks.
- You can turn off the heat once the Chinese white sauce thickens. Adjust for seasoning and add salt if you need it.
Notes
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Cooking Tips
Here are some of our cooking tips.
Stir Frying
The first tip is that if you add this as a base for stir-frying other dishes, wait until you thoroughly cook all your food. Then, pour in the condiment. It will coat your dish thoroughly and give off a wonderful aroma.
When you stir-fry Chinese white sauce, cook finely chopped aromatics such as ginger, garlic or onions first. These ingredients will burn quickly and taint the flavour of the food. Preheat your wok to low heat before adding these ingredients. Then, cook them gently, ensuring the wok's surface is well-coated with oil.
The next tip is to make your chicken stock from scratch. You need to simmer a whole chicken with onions, cilantro, scallions, and ginger. This adds an umami flavour to the condiment. While we recommend buying chicken stock to save time, this extra step will enhance your dish.
Store-bought dip always tastes good because of the high sodium content. When cooking your homemade version, don't be afraid to add more or reduce the salt depending on your taste.
Substitutes
If you need substitutes for your Chinese white sauce ingredients, we have some recommendations that you can try.
Make vegan Chinese white sauce
Vegetable stock can be used to make a vegan Chinese stir-fry base mix. We recommend creating your stock from scratch using scraps of leafy greens such as choy sum, kai lan, and bok choy.
Another hack is to use vegetarian oyster sauce, which is usually made from mushrooms. Typically, we dissolve about 1 tablespoon vegetarian oyster mix in 1 cup of water to create a makeshift vegetable stock.
Making it a lighter Chinese stir-fry sauce
If you don't want a veggie base but still prefer a light base, use seafood to replace chicken. Shrimps are suitable substitutes as they are slightly sweet.
While we add cornstarch to thicken the stir fry gravy, you can remove it to make a thinner consistency.
Richer or thicker base
If you like a more robust flavour in your stir-fry gravy, try using beef stock instead of chicken. It will make the gravy much richer with a stronger umami.
You can also add other ingredients, such as peppercorn and scallion, if you want a sharper burst of flavour to the gravy.
You can also add lemongrass, scallions, leeks and onions instead of garlic or ginger. These spices will add an enticing aroma to your gravy. Try finely chopped red chillies or peppercorns to get a spicier mixture for the Chinese white sauce.
How To Store
For three days, you can store Chinese white sauce in an airtight container in the fridge. The condiment will set once it has cooled, turning into a gel-like consistently. However this will turn soft again, once you reheat it in a wok.
Pro tip: If you want to store the condiment longer, we recommend leaving out the cornstarch and adding it to the mixture only when you can cook. Cornstarch gradually loses its thickening powder, and if you add it without the intention of using what you cooked, your dip will thin out.
Uses
We love to use Chinese white sauce to stir-fry meat, seafood and vegetables. It is the perfect accompaniment to these ingredients as it is not too heavy and allows the taste textures to come through.
Shrimps, scallops and lobster are a good choice as they have a distinctive sweetness that you wouldn't want to mask.
As for meat, they also go well with beef, lamb and chicken to balance out their richer and heavier taste.
We like to stir-fry Chinese leafy greens such as boy choy, kai lan, and choy sum with Chinese white sauce. Unlike seafood, the base doesn't overpower the vegetables' natural sweetness.
Another way to enjoy it is to pour it over rice or noodles. It makes an excellent broth-like meal.
Calories
Each serving of Chinese white sauce is approximately 40 kcal. The calorie count will increase if you use more cooking oil, cornstarch and meat to cook the stock.
History
This stir fry base has a highly debatable origin, but most sources we found online point it to the Cantonese people.
However, this is not the same as Cantonese-style sauce, also known simply as 'brown sauce'. Chinese cooks usually use brown gravy for lamb or duck dishes as it has a more robust flavour.
Websites cite these gravies as an American invention since there are no known records of this gravy in Asia. However, Chinese history books indicate that cooks use light gravy.
So, it could be that the gravy only became popular when the Chinese settled in America and started to name their dishes to appeal to the Western public.
Chinese white sauce vs. brown sauce
Chinese white sauce has a light-coloured appearance, while the brown sauce is darker. The former is used for fish, seafood, and vegetables, while people use the latter for cooking meat dishes like duck and lamb.
Both broth-based dips are common stir-fry bases but are cooked somewhat differently.
Chinese brown gravy dishes have a richer, more intense tang. The gravy is made from light and dark soy sauce with a pinch of five-spice powder pinch.
The brown gravy stock is from stir-frying meat. Many Chinese restaurants prepare the brown base by dipping it over rice and adding chopped scallion and sesame oil.
However, the Chinese white stir fry base seeks to complement rather than overwhelm the food. It is delicate and subtle, allowing the flavour of other ingredients to come through. Most Chinese restaurants use this gravy to stir-fry mixed vegetables.
Chinese white stir fry base is usually made from stock without soy sauce. Hence, it is lower in calories and proteins. Chinese brown gravy is usually made from beef stock with soy sauce and has higher calories and proteins.
There are many different broth-like stir-fry bases, but Chinese white sauce is one of the most popular. You can cook it and store it until you need to stir-fry dishes.
Looking for a Chinese stir-fry dish to try? Check out our Hong Kong noodles recipe.
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