Chinese Brown Sauce Gravy

Every Chinese takeaway has a version of this behind the counter, and the technique is worth knowing because it takes about ten minutes. There is no roux and no long reduction. You build flavour with ginger, garlic, soy and Shaoxing wine, then thicken at the last moment with cornflour, which gives that particular glassy shine you do not get from flour.

Ingredients

Makes about 400ml, enough for four

• 1 tbsp groundnut or rapeseed oil
• 15g (½oz) fresh ginger, finely sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
• 2 spring onions, white parts sliced, green parts kept for the end
• 2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine a brown Chinese cooking wine, sold in Chinese supermarkets and the world food aisle. Dry sherry is a close substitute
• 400ml (14fl oz) hot chicken stock
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce thicker and less salty, mainly there for colour
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• ½ tsp ground white pepper
• 1½ tbsp cornflour slaked in 3 tbsp cold water
• ½ tsp toasted sesame oil to finish

Kit

• Wok or saucepan
• Small bowl
• Spoon

Method

1. Heat the oil in a wok or small saucepan over a medium heat. Add the ginger, garlic and the white parts of the spring onions and stir fry for about ninety seconds, until fragrant and just turning golden at the edges. Do not let the garlic brown.

2. Pour in the Shaoxing wine and let it bubble away for thirty seconds, scraping the base. The sharp smell should give way to something rounder.

3. Add the hot stock, both soy sauces, the oyster sauce, sugar and white pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook for five minutes so the aromatics infuse.

4. Strain out the ginger, garlic and spring onion if you want a smooth sauce, or leave them in for a rougher one. Return the liquid to the pan and bring it back to a proper simmer, because cornflour needs real heat to thicken.

5. Stir the cornflour slurry again, since it settles within seconds, then pour it into the simmering sauce in a thin stream while stirring constantly.

6. Cook for one minute more, still stirring. The sauce will go from cloudy to clear and glossy, and thicken enough to coat the back of a spoon. If it is thicker than you want, loosen with a splash of stock.

7. Take it off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and scatter over the green parts of the spring onions. Serve over rice, noodles, roast pork or steamed vegetables.

Tips worth knowing

• Cornflour thickens then thins again if you boil it hard for too long. One minute of simmering after it goes in is plenty, and after that leave it alone.
• Dark soy is for colour, light soy is for salt. Swapping one for the other gives you a sauce that is either pale and far too salty or dark and flat.
• Add the sesame oil off the heat. Heated hard it turns harsh and loses the toasted smell that is the point of it.
• This is not gluten free as written, since standard soy sauce and oyster sauce both contain wheat. Tamari and a gluten free oyster sauce make it so.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps four days in the fridge, where it will set firm and go cloudy. Reheat gently with a splash of water and it comes back to a gloss. Cornflour sauces go watery on freezing, so this one is best made fresh.

Questions people ask