Steve Pope wrote:
> aem > wrote:
>
>> On Aug 4, 3:06 pm, (Steve Pope) wrote:
>
>>> Does anybody here brew their own soy sauce, or ferment their
>>> own black bean sauce, or concoct their own oyster sauce from
>>> oysters?
>
>> One of my Chinese uncles brewed his own soy sauce once. Took a
>> loooong time, he fussed over it a lot, and he was disappointed with
>> the result. Never tried again.
>
> Interesting.
>
>> Black bean sauce is easy. I buy the fermented/preserved black beans,
>> dry in plastic bag in a cardboard cylinder package. When you want
>> black bean sauce you (optionally rinse them), chop them up with some
>> garlic and put them in your hot wok. Add soy, wine, water to taste.
>
> (Arg, you're using "soy" to refer to soy sauce.)
>
> (Ignore previous comment, just one of my pet peeves.)
>
>> Bottled black bean sauce is all "one note", whereas you can vary
>> whichever of the ingredients you like to your taste when you make your
>> own.
>
> I didn't know one could buy fermented/preserved black beans.
> I'll have to look for those. I normally mix black beans (cooked,
> but unfermented) with rice vinegar, chilis, tomato paste and
> sesame oil and leave sit up to a week refrigerated. What
> I haven't tried is getting the stuff to ferment on its own.
>
>> Apart from the joke in this thread, I don't know anyone who has made
>> their own oyster sauce.
>>
>>> Just curious. It seems to me it's relatively difficult
>>> to avoid bottled ingredients in Chinese food preparation,
>>> relative to many other types of cuisines.
>>>
>> I think that's an accurate observation. I've got a good array of
>> sauces and pastes and curds and oils that it would be quite difficult
>> to make.
>
> Right
>
>> I think the current question is whether a bottled "stir fry
>> sauce" is necessarily good or bad, inferior or superior to making your
>> own up on the spot, because it probably doesn't contain anything you
>> don't have in the cupboard. I don't know of any reason to suppose
>> that the manufactured product is unbalanced in some way that wouldn't
>> taste good. What you can say is that by using a bottled blend you
>> give up control over the quantity and quality of each of the
>> components. How much that matters to any cook seems clearly to be a
>> personal decision. -aem
>
> I mainly avoid them because of the cost and the uncontrolled
> amount of sodium. But an advantage, to me, of buying a stir
> fry sauce instead of using oyster sauce or black bean sauce
> combined with other ingredients is I do not go through
> the oyster or black bean sauces fast enough. I only make
> a few stir-fries per month.
>
> They do last forever in the refrigerator but I only have
> so much room there.
>
> Steve

I think bottled "stir fry sauce" never tastes as bright/good as using
the individual components and always have a weird taste. To me the whole
point of preparing something yourself is to get a good result. If I
wanted industrial taste I could just stop at one of the various big box
restaurants and let them put a scoop of industrial "Asian style" sauce
on something.

The individual components are really inexpensive, easy to use and
produce a great result and even if you threw them away when half used
you would likely spend a lot less than the "stir fry sauce" which I am
sure isn't $0.29/bottle.