8. Sauces
Add some flavour to your world!
Sauces are an essential element in cuisines all over the world. In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavour, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin Salsa, meaning salted. Possibly the oldest recorded sauce is Doubanjiang, the Chinese soy bean paste is mentioned in Rites of Zhou in the 3rd century BC. Sauces need a liquid component.
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Sauces may be used for sweet or savory dishes. They are prepared and served cold, lukewarm or warm. Or, of course, they are freshly prepared by the cook, especially in restaurants. But today many sauces are sold premade and packaged like Sriracha. The H&S assortment is rich with all kinds of sauces, so please have a look…
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CHILLI SAUCE
Chilli sauce is a sauce with chilli peppers as a main ingredient. Chilli peppers originally come from Mexico where they have been part of the diet for over 6000 years. Around 1500 AD Portuguese traders introduced chilli peppers to Asian people. Nowadays chilli peppers are an integral part of Indian and Southeast Asian cuisine. Chillies can be used fresh (frozen) or dried. Chillies are dried to preserve them for long periods of time, which may also be done by pickling. Dried chillies are often ground into powders and used as a spice.
There are a number of different kinds of chilli sauces varying from mild and sweet to spicy and sour and they are part of Asian, American and Caribbean cuisine. The sauces are often used as cooking ingredient but also as dip or seasoning. The difference between Chilli Sauce and Sambal is that it is more liquid. The intensity of the "heat" of chili peppers is commonly reported in Scoville heat units (SHU).
Sriracha is a hot chilli sauce which originally comes from the coastal city ‘Sri Racha’ in East - Thailand.
The basis of the sauce contains grounded sunriped chillies, vinegar, sugar, salt and a bit of garlic.
The spiciness of the Sriracha depends on the chilli percentage and the chilli species used. It varies from very very hot (Blackout Sriracha) to normal hot (Original).
Our Flying Goose brand has a very large range of different Sriracha flavours available. There are Sriracha varieties made of green and yellow chilli peppers. And there are varieties in which different spices are mixed in the Sriracha, like for example garlic, lemongrass, coriander, black pepper etc.
SRIRACHA AND HOT CHILLI SAUCE
SRIRACHA MAYO
Consumers often mix Sriracha with a more mild creamy sauce like Mayonnaise. This lead to the development of a new innovative sauce; Sriracha Mayo Sauce. Sriracha Mayo Sauce is a combination of the spiciness of chilli with a creamy mild sauce. Sriracha Mayo contains no egg and is therefore suitable for Vegans.
SWEET CHILLI SAUCE
Sweet Chilli sauces’ main ingredients are cut red chilli peppers and sugar. Sweet Chilli sauce is mild of taste and (sometimes VERY) sweet. The sauces are very popular as a dip for spring rolls.
An innovative variant of the famous Sweet Chilli Sauce is Thai Dancer's Sweet Chilli Sauce Black. It has the same sweet taste but a nice dark colour.
SOY SAUCE
Soy sauce is a fermented sauce made from soybeans, roasted grains, water and sea salt. Soy sauce is used in all Asian cuisine and can be added directly to food and is used as a dip or salt flavour in cooking. Soy sauce can be stored at room temperature.
BLACK SOY SAUCE
Dark soy sauce is a thick, more mature sauce to which syrup has been added to give it its distinctive appearance. This variety is normally used as a table sauce (well-known from the sushi restaurants) but can also be used for cooking. It has a richer flavour than light soy sauce but is less salty.
SHOYU / JAPANESE SOY SAUCE
Japanese style soy sauces, also known as shoyu, are usually brewed for months rather than weeks and maybe aged for even longer to develop the flavour. Generally, Japanese soy sauces are brewed with less salt. Roasted wheat and a mixture of yeast and fungal cultures (also known as koji) are key ingredients in Japanese soy sauce. Colourings are rarely if ever, used. In Japan, soy sauce is used as much for flavour as for colour, if not more so.
SOY SAUCE WITH MUSHROOM FLAVOUR
Mushroom soy sauce is a dark soy sauce from China which adds straw mushroom or shiitake mushroom essence to the sauce's brew. It has a deep, rich flavour and can be used in place of other types of soy sauce in most recipes. It is especially nice as a table condiment where its unusual flavour can come through.
VARIOUS SOY SAUCES
Besides these different soy sauces, H&S has several other soy variants like soy sauce with chilli, organic or reduced salt.
VARIOUS SAUCES
HOISIN SAUCE
Hoisin sauce is a sweet sauce made from soy beans, rice vinegar, garlic, red peppers, sugar, salt and water. Hoi Sin is Cantonese and can be roughly translated as "sea creatures". However, shellfish is not used in the sauce and it is mostly used to add flavour to meat dishes. The sauce comes from the Chinese kitchen but is also used in Vietnamese cuisine,
where it has become an indispensable ingredient of certain varieties of Pho, a noodle soup.
FISH SAUCE
Every kitchen has its staples. Fish Sauce is a central ingredient in Asian cuisine, it is the salty element in the seasoning that balances all savoury dishes like Curries, Stir-Fries and Soups. Thai Fish Sauce is an unusual condiment: it smells and tastes extremely pungent, but when combined with other ingredients, it blends into a whole, supports other flavours and is unobstructive. In many Asian countries Fish Sauce is used as we use salt. A few drops are usually enough to give the dish the right flavour. Fish sauce tightens the taste. Too little and the taste will be loose, but too much is too salty. Always add Fish Sauce gradually, tasting as you do so, in order not to over-salt.
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Fish sauce is made from freshly caught Anchovies that are too small for eating. The Anchovies are combined with Sea Salt and water and the mixture is placed into barrels and left to ferment for a minimum of 1 year. Fish should be the main flavour that you taste, followed by salt. Not the other way around, some sweetness is okay.
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