One of the valuable properties of hoisin sauce is its versatility. It is one of the few Chinese seasonings that can seamlessly transition into western applications. It might even be as versatile as soy sauce. The sweet-and-savory (and sometimes spicy) flavor profile of this Cantonese condiment makes it a fantastic complement to a vast range of foods. If you are not familiar with it, hoisin sauce tastes like a richer and sweeter soy sauce with nuance and complexity you won’t get from soy sauce. It also does not have the bitterness of the darker soy sauces.
The consistency of hoisin sauce can vary dramatically from thick and paste-like to thin and syrupy. Which you choose depends on how you plan to use it. The uses below are grouped by what you’re asking the sauce to do, and if you’re ready to make your own spicy hoisin sauce, take a look at our recipe here. Or check out this hoisin BBQ sauce recipe that can be used in many of the same ways below.
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What does hoisin bring to a dish?
Hoisin is a fermented soybean paste sweetened and seasoned into a sauce, and that’s the whole character in one line: salty and deeply savoury underneath, sweet on top, with garlic and a little five-spice warmth running through. Thick, dark, and it clings.
Two things follow. The sugar means it browns and can catch, so anything you brush it on wants watching. And the depth means a spoonful reads as though the dish has been cooking far longer than it really has.
One puzzle worth knowing, since it gets repeated as fact: the name translates as seafood sauce, and hoisin contains none. Cooks rarely pair it with seafood either. Nobody has a settled explanation for the name, so treat it as a curiosity instead of a serving suggestion.
Cook it into the dish
Here the sauce disappears into whatever it’s cooking with and becomes the backbone of the flavor.
As a marinade
Pork, chicken and duck all take it well, either on its own or loosened with soy, rice wine and garlic. Most jars get stuck on Chinese dishes, and they don’t have to. Hoisin makes a very good marinade for ribs or a pork shoulder headed for the smoker, and you can use it in place of a dry rub or alongside one.
In a stir-fry
Hoisin can carry the whole liquid side of a stir-fry, thinned with a splash of water or stock so it coats instead of clumping. The sauce ties the other flavours together and then stays in the background, which is what you want from a stir-fry sauce. Beef, pork and poultry all take it, and so do vegetables that can carry sweetness, like peppers, cabbage and green beans. Our spicy Chinese beef with cumin is a good example of it.
In a braise
A few tablespoons in a braise for pork belly, short ribs or chicken thighs does two jobs at once: it seasons the liquid, and it thickens it as the pot reduces. Go easy, because the sugar concentrates as things cook down, and a braise that tasted balanced at the start can finish cloying.
Brush it on
Now the sauce stays on the surface, where the sugar caramelises and gives you colour and gloss.
On ribs and wings
Hoisin is unusually good on anything crisp and fatty. Brush it onto wings in the last few minutes of baking, grilling or frying, and the thick, molasses-like body sticks where a thinner sauce would run straight off. Ribs take the same treatment. Timing matters more than quantity here: put it on early and the sugar burns before the meat is done.
On roasted vegetables
Eggplant is the standout, halved and scored and brushed while it roasts until the cut face goes dark and sticky. Squash, carrots and sprouts all take it too. A little rice vinegar or lime stirred in keeps the sweetness from running away with the tray.
On salmon
Hoisin thinned with soy and a little honey, brushed onto a salmon fillet for the last few minutes under a hot grill, is about as fast as a good weeknight dinner gets. Nobody would call it traditional, and it works anyway.
Serve it on the side
Left alone in a dish, hoisin stays itself, and this is where most people first meet it.
As a dipper
Straight from the jar it’s a dip for egg rolls, spring rolls and dumplings, and it’s very good against anything fried. Loosen it with a little warm water when it’s too stiff to scoop, and stir in rice vinegar, sesame oil or chilli if you want it less sweet.
With pho and at the table
In plenty of Vietnamese restaurants a bottle of hoisin sits next to the sriracha so you can dose your own bowl. Purists will tell you a good broth needs neither, and they have a point, but the two together are a perfectly respectable way to eat pho. If you like that habit, our sriracha uses guide covers the other end of the table.
In pancakes and wraps
Peking duck is the famous one. Hoisin is the sauce you spread inside the pancake, with the duck, the spring onion and the cucumber. The glaze often gets credited to it as well, and that part is wrong: the lacquered sheen on the skin comes from a maltose or honey syrup and a long air-dry before roasting, with no hoisin near it. The same spread-it-in-the-wrap logic carries to moo shu, lettuce wraps and bao.
Build another sauce on it
Hoisin makes a good base because it arrives already seasoned. You’re tuning something that’s already seasoned, so these take about a minute each:
- Barbecue sauce. Hoisin plus ketchup, vinegar and a little smoke gets you a long way, and our cherry hoisin sauce takes the same idea toward fruit.
- Peanut dipping sauce. Hoisin, peanut butter and warm water, loosened until it pours.
- Hoisin mayo. A spoonful stirred into mayonnaise, for sandwiches, burgers and anything fried.
- A quick dressing. Thinned with rice vinegar and sesame oil, it dresses slaw and cold noodles.
- A glaze for meatballs or meatloaf. Brushed on in the last ten minutes in place of ketchup.
Two things to watch. Hoisin is salty, so taste before you add any more soy or salt to whatever you’re building. And it’s sweet, so the first adjustment is almost always acid.
Thick or thin: which jar should you buy?
Hoisin varies a lot between brands, from a stiff paste you have to dig out to something closer to a syrup, and the label rarely tells you which you’re getting. So match it to what you cook most.
A thick one is better for brushing and spreading, because it stays where you put it on a wing or inside a pancake. A thinner one is easier for stir-fries, marinades and dressings, where you want it to loosen and coat without a fight. Either can be pushed toward the other with a little warm water or a short spell in a warm pan, so this is a preference rather than a problem.
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Related reading
- Does Hoisin Sauce Go Bad? What’s the shelf life you should expect?
- What’s A Good Hoisin Sauce Substitute? Where do you turn when you have none in house?
- Hoisin Peanut Sauce: This recipe is so delicious as a dipper for chicken.