What Are the Ingredients of Stir-Fry Sauce?

Fundamentals

The basic thing to remember about almost all of your favorite Chinese restaurant stir-fry sauces is that they are based on cornstarch--the thick, liquid part of the sauce. What makes one sauce different from another are the remaining ingredients, which impart the flavor.

Basic brown sauce for stir-frying can be done one of two ways. A typical recipe calls for combining 2 tbsp. of regular soy sauce with 2/3 cup of liquid cornstarch, 1 tbsp. grated ginger or ginger powder, 1 clove crushed or grated garlic and 1 tbsp. molasses. However, most restaurants will use thick soy sauce as a substitute for the normal soy sauce and the molasses. The thick soy sauce is sweeter and has a heavier texture, and anyone who plans to do a lot of soy sauce stir-frying would do well to buy a jar of it.

The most popular spins on brown sauce are to spice it up, as is common with kung pao and Szechwan dishes. To turn ordinary brown soy sauce into kung pao sauce, add a tsp. of sherry, a minced scallion and 4 to 6 fresh or dried red chilies. Cut off the tops the chilies and then chop them in half before putting them in the wok. Be sure to include at least some of the seeds in the sauce, but as these pack most of the hot stuff that will make the sauce spicy, do so sparingly unless you really like incendiary food. Szechwan sauce is almost the same, except you should double the sherry, double the garlic, and use 1 or 2 tsp. of crushed red peppers instead of whole chilies.

The difference between stir-fry brown sauce and the white sauce in dishes like moo goo gai pan is that you need to use regular soy sauce, and not the thick stuff. Two tbsp. of soy sauce per 2/3 cup of cornstarch will make the sauce a little beige, but adding molasses or using the thick soy sauce will turn it brown. These sauces are really not that far apart in terms of ingredients.

Chinese curries are usually very different from Indian curries, so don't think this stir-fry sauce can be transferred to making a good pot of tikka masala. The cornstarch is mixed with 2 tsp. of 5 spice powder, 2 tsp. of curry, the same crushed or grated clove of garlic and 1tbsp. of grated ginger or ginger powder as before, plus 1/2 tsp. of chili powder. Mix that into the 2/3 cup of liquid cornstarch, and you have a Chinese restaurant curry sauce.