Cantonese Oyster Sauce... Sauce (蚝油汁)

A Cantonese flavor profile that forms an easily-smotherable sauce, or a stir-fry base.

We’ve covered how to make actual, from-scratch Cantonese oyster sauce before.

To save you the click, the sauce itself is traditionally the by-product of making dried oysters — a criminally underrated ingredient among the already-underrated Cantonese dried ingredient pantheon. Like a lot of dried seafood, the process to make dried oysters it really quite simple: boil until cooked (30 minutes, for oysters), toss on a bamboo steamer, and leave outside in the intense subtropical sun.

But oysters, of course, have a liquor — and that liquor partially comes along for the ride in that blanching process. The blanching liquid won’t be much at first blush, but if you let it reduce over a couple hours the whole thing will morph into a deep brown, delicious, oyster-y sludge.

That’s the old school way, at least. These days the bottle is quite different, with much a much less reduced base, and cutting everything with caramel and cellulose gum (and/or oyster extract). So if you’re engaged in the process of making dried oysters anyway, I would suggest trying your hand at old school oyster sauce sometime. You’ll learn about what to look for in a good oyster sauce, and even with small yields, it can easily be added to your current bottle of LKK or Haitian to give it a little more punch. It’s a fun project for a Chinese cooking nerd to try their hand at sometime.

This post, I think, will be a lot more practical. This is not how to make oyster sauce — this is how to make oyster sauce… sauce.

The Oyster Sauce Flavor Profile

If you go to a Cantonese restaurant, it’s quite common to find dishes on the menu that are “oyster sauce ____”. And while it’s certainly not unheard of in Cantonese kitchens to straight up dump some oyster sauce on a noodle or blanched vegetable, usually what you’re looking at is a flavor profile built around the ingredient.

It can form a base for a stir fry — more on than below — and in that context it’s often paired with seafood and beef. But the same flavor can also be seen as a viscous sauce as well, often as something to top over… noodle or blanched vegetable (spot the theme?).

To make it, in a bowl, mix

• 25g (~2 tbsp) oyster sauce (蚝油)

• 25g water -or- stock

• 1 tsp soy sauce (生抽)

• 1 tsp sugar

• ¼ tsp dark soy sauce (老抽), optional

• ⅛ tsp MSG (味精)

In a separate bowl, make a slurry by mixing

• ¼ tsp potato starch or cornstarch (生粉)

• ½ tsp water

Then, in a pot over a medium flame, heat

• ½ tbsp peanut oil

and add in the oyster sauce mixture. Once simmering, swap the flame to low and thicken with the slurry.

To serve over blanched lettuce:

Get a pot of water up to a boil and add

• ½ tsp salt

• ½ tbsp oil, optional

once dissolved, add:

• 400g romaine lettuce (生菜)

It should be done after a quick mix. Remove the lettuce, strain, and transfer to a plate. Drain out any excess water, then smother with the sauce.

To serve over boiled noodles:

Makes 1 serving.

Boil

• 150g fresh egg or wonton noodles/100g dried egg or wonton noodles (蛋面)

until done. Mix with

• ½ tbsp oil, lard preferably

then smother the sauce on. Mix well. If it is still a little sticky (possible if left out for a touch), add hot boiled water (~1-2 tbsp) to loosen it up.

Oyster Sauce Beef Stir Fry

This stir fry is going to lean on a ‘stir fry sauce’ that’s… practically identical to the previous recipe with a slight variation: We’ll cut the sugar in half and add in a little pepper, but because beef goes fantastic with with dried shiitake mushroom… we’ll also include the soaking liquid as the optional ‘stock’ in said sauce.

Rinse, and soak in ~1 cup of cool water:

• 4 dried shiitake mushrooms (冬菇)

for at least three hours. Squeeze the excess liquid from the mushrooms, remove the stems, and cut into slices. Strain and reserve ~25g of the soaking liquid for the sauce.

Cut:

• ~1 inch ginger

• 2 scallions

Slice the ginger into sheets. Separate the white part from the green part of the scallion, cutting them both into ~1.5 inch sections.

In a bowl, combine:

• 25g (~2 tbsp) oyster sauce (蚝油)

• 25g soaking liquid from above

• 1 tsp soy sauce (生抽)

• ½ tsp sugar

• ¼ tsp dark soy sauce (老抽), optional

• ⅛ tsp MSG (味精)

• ⅛ tsp white -or- black pepper powder

and set aside. In a separate bowl, make a slurry of

• ¼ tsp potato starch or cornstarch (生粉)

• 1 tsp water

and set aside. Thinly slice

• 400g beef, e.g. flank, hanger, or skirt

into ~2mm slices against the grain. Then marinate with

• ½ tsp salt

• ⅛ tsp sodium carbonate (碱面) -or- Kan Sui (枧水) -or- ¼ tsp baking soda (小苏打)

• ¼ tsp white -or- black pepper powder

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp soy sauce

• 1 tsp liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒)

• 1 tsp oyster sauce

• ¼ tsp dark soy sauce (老抽), optional

• ½ tbsp potato starch -or- cornstarch (生粉)

• ¼ cup water

• 1 tsp oil

mixing all the ingredients well together until the water is absorbed, then coating with oil. Then, pre-cook the beef via passing through oil. Add

• 1 cup oil

to a wok and heat up until bubbles can begin to rapidly form around a pair of chopsticks, ~170C. Add in the beef and fry until done. Strain, and reserve the frying oil.

Add ~1 tbsp of the frying oil back to the pot. Over a high flame, fry the ginger and the scallion whites until fragrant (~15 seconds). Add the sliced mushrooms and fry until fragrant (~15 seconds). Pour

• 1 tbsp liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒)

over your spatula and around the sides of the wok. Mix well, then turn the flame to medium and add in the sauce. Once simmering, thicken with the prepared slurry. Add back the cooked beef and the green part of the scallion. Mix for ~15 seconds, then coat with another 1 tbsp of the beef cooking oil for sheen.

Serve in a bowl, or alternatively over fried rice noodles like we did in the video.

How to Fry Rice Noodles

Coat

• 500g fresh rice noodles

with

• 1.5 tbsp oil

• ½ tsp dark soy sauce (老抽)

Prepare a seasoning sauce for the stir-fry:

• 1 tsp soy sauce (生抽)

• ⅛ tsp salt

• ⅛ tsp sugar

• 2 tbsp water

Then, heat up a wok with the flame on maximum, then swirl in

• 2 tbsp oil

and add in the rice noodles. Spread the rice noodles out a touch and let them ‘pan-fry’ until barely starting to brown (1-2 minutes). Flip and do the same thing on the other side.

Pour the seasoning sauce around the edge of the wok, and mix well. Add

• 50g beansprouts

• 1-2 scallions, green part only, cut into 1.5” sections

and briefly stir-fry for ~15 seconds or so.