HOISIN SAUCE

By Joanna Sciarrino Illustration by Sally Thurer

he internet-available information about hoisin encyclopedia that says haixian jiang is a collective T sauce is all very, very shallow: it’s a Chinese sauce, name for seafood sauces, such as shrimp sauce, crab it’s sweet, it’s good with many things. But what is it? sauce, and clam sauce. I also found one Hong Kong Where does it come from? When was it created? Its chefs’ handbook that says it’s made from pulverized name means “seafood,” but the sauce contains no black bean sauce with ‘seafood,’ cane sugar, garlic, seafood. The trail goes cold quickly if you want to know vinegar, and five-spice powder. There are some recipes something substantive about the stuff that comes online that are based on fermented shrimp sauce. with your pho. So, without being able to answer you definitively, I reached out to Hong Kong-based food company I would guess that it was originally a kind of fermented Lee Kum Kee, which has been making hoisin for more sauce based either on fermented black beans or on tian- than thirty years, hoping they could answer me: mian jiang (sweet fermented sauce/fermented wheat Hoisin was traditionally used in Southern Chinese sauce), with some kind of dried/fermented seafood cooking, specifically for seafood dishes. The word element for umami, and some other seasonings too, hoisin is from the Chinese word for seafood. At that and that over time manufacturers cut back on the more time it was used for stir fries and dipping primarily. expensive seafood elements. This seems like the most Now it has become a staple ingredient for all types of likely explanation, because as you know, hoisin sauce cooking and is used as a base, glaze, and marinade. It is more commonly used for ingredients such as pork, has become a multipurpose sauce. and not much for seafood, which would be the other For a company that could fill swimming pools with logical reason for the name. the stuff, I was expecting a little more insight. Plus, This would explain the absence of any seafood there’s plenty of researched opinion out there to the and/or shellfish product in today’s bottled hoisin. But contrary: in a 1997 issue of the Chinese food-focused I can’t fully corroborate any one theory about hoisin’s newsletter Flavor & Fortune, Eva Koveos writes, “Ironi- origins. Maybe hoisin once had seafood in it, maybe it cally hoisin means ‘sea-freshness’ sauce in Chinese, didn’t. Maybe it made its way from China to Vietnam but it contains no trace of seafood and usually is not in the twentieth century, or maybe it evolved out of served with it; rather it is popular in Chinese dishes another bean-based condiment in Vietnam. Maybe it’s containing poultry and pork.” from Mars. I was flummoxed. So I asked Chinese cuisine expert So after my futile quest for discovery, the most and scholar Fuchsia Dunlop if she could possibly clear important facts about hoisin are those that you can things up: you confirm for yourself: it tastes good onchar siu, Hoisin sauce (haixian jiang) is mainly a Canton- Peking duck, and moo shu pork. It’s great in a Taiwan- ese thing. Many sources on Chinese ingredients don’t ese-style pork bun. And it is very nice to have along- mention it at all. I did find one entry in a good culinary side a bowl of pho.

Lucky Peach 2 3 Pho Issue