Andrew Wong’s Chinese sauces masterclass

A bit about Andrew Wong

British-born of Chinese heritage, as a child Andrew helped at his parents’ Pimlico restaurant, serving what was standard Cantonese fare at the time. Determined not to go into hospitality, he went to university to study social anthropology but, after his father died, returned to help his mother.

In the restaurant, intrigued by the connections he could see between food, culture and history, Andrew became determined to learn more about regional Chinese cuisines. He then spent six months travelling in China, learning local recipes and techniques, and returned to re-open the family restaurant as A Wong in 2012 (a nod to his parents, Albert and Annie). The restaurant was a great success and has become a must-visit destination for food lovers. Follow Andrew on Instagram.

Andrew’s Chinese sauces masterclass

As the chef-owner of A Wong, the only Chinese restaurant outside Asia to hold two Michelin stars (and where a certain delicious. head of food ate the best meal of his entire life), Andrew Wong certainly knows his stuff. So when he has some insight to share, we’re all ears. And while the dishes he serves require skill, time and manpower far beyond anything a home cook could manage, there are certain elements, techniques and approaches to his cooking that easily translate into what we cook in our kitchens.

A good sauce can bring a dish together, provide complementary or contrasting flavour or balance textures on the plate (and often all three at the same time). Whether it’s a French coq au vin or a Sichuanese mapo tofu, it’s really the sauce that provides most of the flavour.

“The sauce is often more important than the meat, fish or vegetables in a dish in Chinese cuisine,” says Andrew. “Let’s take a stir-fry, for example – generally the protein is sliced and marinated – not because of flavour, but to create a consistent tenderness and texture. It’s the sauce the protein is coated in that people taste first; you could say the protein is little more than a carrier for the sauce.”

Two approaches, East and West

The same could certainly be said for many European dishes; sauce is an important aspect of gastronomy. But how the sauces are created differs greatly between China and somewhere like France (where the basis of much of European cooking comes from). “If you think about classical French cooking, all the sauces seem to be based on stocks made from meat or fish,” explains Andrew. “There are a lot of types of jus and gravy-style sauces, which are cooked for a long, long time to bring out the umami flavours of the raw ingredients.”

This approach – take good raw ingredients and tease out their deep, complex flavours through long, gentle cooking – is almost the opposite of how sauces are made in Chinese cuisine. “China has a population of 1.4 billion people, so there’s an element of functionality and practicality to the food,” says Andrew. “It’s simply not practical to have sauces that require bones and vegetables to be boiled in water for nine hours. Instead, we take products like soy sauce or oyster sauce, made by skilled people for generations, mix them together, heat them through quickly and make something that is instantly delicious.”

Use ketchup? Absolutely

With Chinese sauces, the hard work is done before you even step foot in the kitchen. Thousands of off-the-shelf bottles, jars and packets of sauces, pastes and fermented foods provide all the umami-rich complexity you could ever want. There’s no need to cook them for a long time to unlock hidden flavours; they’re there from the start. And when you have products so full of flavour available to you, there’s no real reason to make them from scratch, even if you’re a two-Michelin-starred chef.

“There’s a bit of an obsession among European chefs about making absolutely everything from scratch, especially when it comes to a sauce,” says Andrew. “Even something like ketchup will be made by the chefs in a high-end restaurant. But why? We use Heinz ketchup in some of our cooking because it has a specific flavour and viscosity. If we were to make our own version, we’d get something completely different.”

Instant thickening

Flavour is one thing, but texture and thickness also play an important part in a good sauce. After all, you want your sauce to cling to or coat the other ingredients on the plate. In classical French cooking, the body and thickness of sauces are usually a byproduct of the long cooking process – as the water evaporates, the liquid left in the pan becomes more concentrated and thickened. In Chinese cuisine, there usually isn’t enough cooking time for this to happen, so thickeners like cornflour and potato starch are used.

“Some stir-fried dishes take less than a minute to cook from start to finish, so there’s no chance to reduce a sauce,” explains Andrew. “If you were to cook a dish long enough to thicken the sauce through reduction, the texture of the ingredients would falter and you’d destroy some of the flavours in the sauce itself. Instead, you make sure the combination of your sauce ingredients is full of umami and tastes great, throw it in the wok and instantly thicken it to your desired consistency. You’re able to lock in the flavour at the exact point you want it.”

A new mindset

He continues: “This method of thickening sauces allows you to tailor the sauce to the specific dish, too. You can keep the sauce loose and light by adding only a little thickener, or make it full-bodied by adding more. There’s no universal ideal of how thick a sauce should be. You can make it thick enough to be served as a condiment or relish on the side, or loosen it to lightly coat a pot full of ingredients.”

Ready-made sauces, thickeners, instant results – things you probably wouldn’t expect in a Michelin-starred kitchen. But that’s coming from a European mindset, where we simply don’t have the same range of umami-rich fermented products as part of our cuisine. And if you think about it, we do the same thing when we add a dollop of Marmite or a splash of Worcestershire sauce to our stews and ragùs. So… are you ready to liberate your sauce-making?

Andrew’s three game-changing sauces

A great sauce – whether it’s incorporated into a stir-fry or served on the side of a dish as a condiment – is integral to good Chinese cooking. These three from Andrew showcase just how great they can be

Beef ‘XO’ sauce
“This sauce has roots in Hunanese and Sichuanese cooking. Stir it into fried rice, put it on top of congee or have it with whatever you’re eating, from a steak to a bowl of noodles. It’s not actually an XO sauce – it uses beef, not dried seafood – but it’s a pure umami bomb.”

Ginger and spring onion relish
“This relish is the go-to condiment for soy chicken in Cantonese cuisine, but it’s so versatile, I’ve yet to find a dish that can’t be improved by it. Even plain rice is completely transformed. Pouring the hot oil over the ginger gives it a slight smokiness, while the spring onion adds the savoury umami that’s so prevalent in Chinese sauces. Put it on everything!”

Black bean sauce
“Black bean sauce is so useful. Here I’ve made it like a relish, which you can add to fried rice. If you want it as a looser sauce for stir-fries, dilute with a splash of shaoxing wine, a spoonful of oyster sauce and some chicken stock or water, then thicken with cornflour.”

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