A lot of Chinese stir-fry dishes for takeout include "brown sauce." One of the best-known dishes that uses brown sauce is the takeout classic beef and broccoli. The sauce usually contains beef stock or beef broth to give the dish extra flavor, but you can use chicken broth or stock if you like.
Brown sauce is typically a Western Chinese takeaway thing. In some cultures, brown sauce isn't used at all. The whole purpose of the flavorful mixture is to thicken a stir-fry sauce and add savory flavor.
Look for dark soy sauce for this recipe since it adds a richer flavor. Oyster sauce is commonly used in Chinese food and adds a savory, salty, umami flavor. Both can be found in most grocery stores. If you like, you can add grated or minced ginger or garlic. Serve your homemade brown sauce with a beef, chicken, or pork stir-fry or chow mein dish.
"This is a good basic brown sauce. I used it to make a beef and broccoli stir-fry (for 2). To flavor the stir-fry I added some ginger, garlic, a teaspoon of sesame oil, and a bit more sugar. It was excellent." —Diana Rattray
1tablespooncornstarch (corn flour or potato starch)
Steps to Make It
Gather the ingredients.
Add the broth, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, and cornstarch to a saucepan.
Mix evenly and make sure there are no lumps of cornstarch.
Bring it to a boil while stirring. Simmer until the sauce reaches the desired thickness.
How to Use
Use this basic brown sauce as a base sauce for dishes such as beef and broccoli, chicken and broccoli, and other beef, pork, and chicken stir-fries.
Recipe Variations
Chicken Broth Version: Combine 1 cup chicken broth (or chicken stock), 1 1/2tablespoons oyster sauce, 2 teaspoons dark soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon cornstarch (or potato starch) in a saucepan. Mix evenly and make sure there are no lumps. Bring to a boil and keep stirring during cooking. Simmer until the sauce reaches the thickness you like.
Add 1 grated garlic clove.
Add 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger.
Add chile sauce or chile oil if you'd like your brown sauce spicy.
Is Chinese Brown Sauce Healthy?
Chinese brown sauce is low calorie, making it a decently healthy choice when saucing your stir-fries. It does not contain much in the ways of vitamins or nutrients. To reduce the sodium, use low-sodium beef broth and soy sauce. Because brown sauce contains cornstarch it is not appropriate for a keto diet.
Is Hoisin Sauce the Same as Brown Sauce?
Hoisin sauce is a flavorful condiment made of a variety of ingredients depending on the maker. It's often made with soybeans, garlic, chile, sugar, and spices. Brown sauce is a slightly thinner, simpler sauce that is broth-based. It has a less complex flavor than hoisin sauce.
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)
Broth: Many versions of this dish use beef broth, but you can also find it made with chicken or vegetable broth.Soy Sauce: Soy sauce is one of the main ingredients that you'll find in nearly every version of Chinese brown sauce.
Brown sauce is a condiment commonly served with food in the United Kingdom and Ireland, normally dark brown in colour. The taste is either tart or sweet with a peppery taste similar to that of Worcestershire sauce. Commercial sauces are a blend of tomatoes, malt vinegar, molasses, dates, spices and tamarind.
Chinese Garlic Sauce has a stronger focus on the flavor of garlic, while Chinese Brown Sauce leans more towards a mixture of sweet and savory tones. The base of the brown sauce often consists of soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, and cornstarch, with additional aromatics optional, depending on personal preference.
Soy sauce (jiàng yóu, 酱油), the most common of Chinese sauces, sounds simple, and for the most part, it is. However, there are many types, each unique to different Asian cuisines (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc.).
Brown sauce, also known as sauce Espagnole, uses a brown stock from veal, beef or sometimes chicken and a brown roux as the base. Tomato puree, mirepoix- chopped carrots, celery and onions- and a sachet of seasoning with bay leaf, thyme and parsley add flavor to the sauce.
A blend of cinnamon, cloves, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel and star anise, these five spices give the sour, bitter, pungent, sweet and salty flavors found in Chinese cooking. This spice works extremely well with meats and in marinades.
Aromatic ingredients like garlic, ginger, green onions, chilies and spices. These ingredients are typically added to the oil first to infuse it with flavor. You won't need much; a few teaspoons to a tablespoon of total aromatic ingredients per person adds a serious amount of flavor.
There are actually a few different ways to tenderise chicken the Chinese restaurant way: marinating in a cornstarch/cornflour sludge then deep frying or blanching in water before proceeding to cook in the stir fry.
English “brown sauce” is basically steak sauce. In America, A-1 Sauce might be a good analog, with its complexity of flavor. We typically use steak sauce on beef, but it's fairly versatile, and goes will with most meats or fried foods.
Barbeque sauce also has a tomato and vinegar base, similar to steak sauce, but it is much sweeter than a steak sauce, making it ideal to use as a tasty and sweet alternative to browning sauce. All Recipes have a recipe to make your own.
Thicker, stickier sauces like sweet and sour and sesame are going to be very calorie-dense, so limit those as much as possible. Stir fry sauce, however, is largely made up of soy sauce, making it a much lower-calorie option. Speaking of soy sauce, if you are adding some to a dish, choose the lower-sodium option.
Two basic sauces are the brown sauce and white sauce. Brown sauce is mainly for meat dishes; beef, lamb, duck, yet he also used it in his Chendu Fish dish, to bind together moo shu and one of his tofu dishes. The white sauce was for fish and seafood, chicken and vegetable dishes.
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