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