Oyster sauce
Encyclopedia
Oyster sauce describes a number of sauces made by cooking oysters. The most common in modern use is a viscous dark brown condiment
made from sugar, salt and water thickened with cornstarch
, flavoured with a little oyster essence or extract
and some versions may be darkened with caramel, though high quality oyster sauce is naturally dark. It is commonly used in Cantonese
, Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer cuisine.
. Lee made his living running a small eatery that sold cooked oysters. One day, he was cooking oysters as usual, but lost track of time until he smelt a strong aroma. Lifting the lid of the pot, he noticed that the normally clear oyster soup had turned into a thick, brownish sauce. He started to sell this new invention which turned out to be very popular. So in 1888, he formed Lee Kum Kee
Oyster Sauce House to mass produce oyster sauce.
Dishes that may use oyster sauce include Kai-lan
, Buddha's delight
, Hainanese chicken rice
, Cashew chicken
, Lo mein
, Cha siu baau
, Yum cha
, Har gow, Kai yat sai
, Wonton noodles, and Daikon cake.
until a desired viscosity
has been reached and the liquid has caramelized to a brown colour. No other additives, not even salt
, should be added to the sauce, since the oysters should provide all the savory flavour. However, this method is prohibitively expensive.
Many modern oyster sauces are thickened with cornstarch
, flavoured with oyster essence or extract
and darkened with caramel.
s, often oyster mushrooms or shiitake
mushrooms, is also popular and generally lower in price. It may contain more taste enhancers
if less mushroom extract is used to reduce costs.
(MSG). In recent years MSG-free varieties can also be found. The taste of MSG and non-MSG variants is similar as oyster sauce naturally contains large amounts of glutamate.
the oysters by cooking. The white sauce version was moistened with cream whereas in, brown oyster sauce, the cream was replaced with gravy. Common recipes using the sauce included "Steak and oyster sauce", documented as early as 1806, and "Cod and oyster sauce". This sauce was still being eaten in Australia in the 1970s.
found in tests of various oyster sauces and soy sauce
s that some 22% of samples contained a chemical called 3-MCPD
(3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol) at levels considerably higher than those deemed safe by the European Union
. About two-thirds of these samples also contained a second chemical called 1,3-DCP (1,3-dichloropropane-2-ol) which experts advise should not be present at any levels in food. Both chemicals have the potential to cause cancer
and the Agency recommended that the affected products be withdrawn from shelves and avoided.
The joint Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) said it had taken emergency action to amend its food standards code to set a limit for 3-MCPD in soy sauce of 0.02 milligrams per kilogram, in line with European Commission standards which come into force in the EU in April 2002.
Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) singled out brands and products imported from Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Brands named in the British warning include Golden Mountain, King Imperial, Pearl River Bridge, Jammy Chai, Lee Kum Kee, Golden Mark, Kimlan, Golden Swan, Sinsin, Tung Chun and Wanjasham soy sauce.
In July 2001, the FSA issued another statement clearing Lee Kum Kee's name after the company produced laboratory certificates from accredited, reputable laboratories. These certificates show that Lee Kum Kee products now comply with the proposed EU limit for 3-MCPD.
http://www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/2001/jul/soysauce
Condiment
A condiment is an edible substance, such as sauce or seasoning, added to food to impart a particular flavor, enhance its flavor, or in some cultures, to complement the dish. Many condiments are available packaged in single-serving sachets , like mustard or ketchup, particularly when supplied with...
made from sugar, salt and water thickened with cornstarch
Cornstarch
Corn starch, cornstarch, cornflour or maize starch is the starch of the corn grain obtained from the endosperm of the corn kernel.-History:...
, flavoured with a little oyster essence or extract
Extract
An extract is a substance made by extracting a part of a raw material, often by using a solvent such as ethanol or water. Extracts may be sold as tinctures or in powder form....
and some versions may be darkened with caramel, though high quality oyster sauce is naturally dark. It is commonly used in Cantonese
Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and is one of 8 superdivisions of Chinese cuisine. Its prominence outside China is due to the great numbers of early emigrants from Guangdong. Cantonese chefs are highly sought after throughout the country...
, Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer cuisine.
Development
The development of oyster sauce is often credited to Lee Kam Sheung, from Nam Shui Village, GuangdongGuangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
. Lee made his living running a small eatery that sold cooked oysters. One day, he was cooking oysters as usual, but lost track of time until he smelt a strong aroma. Lifting the lid of the pot, he noticed that the normally clear oyster soup had turned into a thick, brownish sauce. He started to sell this new invention which turned out to be very popular. So in 1888, he formed Lee Kum Kee
Lee Kum Kee
Lee Kum Kee International Holdings Ltd. is a food company which specialized in manufacturing oyster flavored sauce and a wide range of authentic Chinese and Asian sauces founded by Lee Kum Sheung in 1888 in Nanshui, a small town in Guangdong. Its primary brand, Lee Kum Kee is well known throughout...
Oyster Sauce House to mass produce oyster sauce.
Culinary use
Oyster sauce adds a savory flavour to many dishes, making it an ideal choice for flavouring meat and vegetables. The sauce is a staple for much Chinese family-style cooking. It is commonly used in noodle stir-fries, such as chow mein. It is also found in popular Chinese-American dishes such as beef with stir-fried vegetables. Oyster sauce can also be used as a topping for some dishes.Dishes that may use oyster sauce include Kai-lan
Kai-lan
Kai-lan, also known as Chinese broccoli, is a leaf vegetable featuring thick, flat, glossy blue-green leaves with thick stems and a small number of tiny, almost vestigial flower heads similar to those of broccoli. Broccoli and kai-lan belong to the same species Brassica oleracea, but kai-lan is in...
, Buddha's delight
Buddha's delight
Buddha's delight, often transliterated as Luóhàn zhāi, lo han jai, or lo hon jai, is a vegetarian dish well known in Chinese and Buddhist cuisine...
, Hainanese chicken rice
Hainanese chicken rice
Hainanese chicken rice is a dish of Chinese origin most commonly associated with Hainanese and Singaporean cuisine, although it is also commonly sold in neighbouring Thailand and Malaysia...
, Cashew chicken
Cashew chicken
Cashew chicken is a simple Chinese-American dish that combines chicken , cashews, and a thick oyster sauce.-Springfield-style cashew chicken:...
, Lo mein
Lo mein
Lo mein is a Chinese dish with wheat flour noodles. It often contains vegetables and some type of meat or seafood, usually beef, chicken, pork, shrimp or wontons.-Etymology:...
, Cha siu baau
Cha siu baau
Cha siu bao or char siu bao is a Cantonese barbecue-pork-filled bun . The buns are filled with barbecue-flavored cha siu pork. They are served as a type of dim sum during yum cha and are sometimes sold in Chinese bakeries.-Variety:...
, Yum cha
Yum cha
Yum cha , also known as Ban ming , is a Chinese style morning or afternoon tea, which involves drinking Chinese tea and eating dim sum dishes...
, Har gow, Kai yat sai
Kai yat sai
Kai yat sai is a type of Thai omelette. The name means "stuffed eggs". The egg is cooked lightly, topped with various ingredients , seasoned with fish sauce and/or oyster sauce, and then folded over....
, Wonton noodles, and Daikon cake.
Varieties
"True" oyster sauce of good quality should be made by condensing oyster extracts, the white broth produced by boiling oysters in water. This opaque broth, similar to the colour of clam juice found in supermarkets, is then reducedReduction (cooking)
In cooking, reduction is the process of thickening and intensifying the flavor of a liquid mixture such as a soup, sauce, wine, or juice by boiling....
until a desired viscosity
Viscosity
Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear or tensile stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness" or "internal friction". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity...
has been reached and the liquid has caramelized to a brown colour. No other additives, not even salt
Salt
In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
, should be added to the sauce, since the oysters should provide all the savory flavour. However, this method is prohibitively expensive.
Many modern oyster sauces are thickened with cornstarch
Cornstarch
Corn starch, cornstarch, cornflour or maize starch is the starch of the corn grain obtained from the endosperm of the corn kernel.-History:...
, flavoured with oyster essence or extract
Extract
An extract is a substance made by extracting a part of a raw material, often by using a solvent such as ethanol or water. Extracts may be sold as tinctures or in powder form....
and darkened with caramel.
Vegetarian oyster sauce
Vegetarian oyster sauce prepared from mushroomMushroom
A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...
s, often oyster mushrooms or shiitake
Shiitake
The Shiitake is an edible mushroom native to East Asia, which is cultivated and consumed in many Asian countries, as well as being dried and exported to many countries around the world. It is a feature of many Asian cuisines including Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai...
mushrooms, is also popular and generally lower in price. It may contain more taste enhancers
Flavour enhancer
Flavour enhancers are food additives commonly added to food and designed to enhance the existing flavours of products. In western cultures, the 5th taste or umami went unrecognized for a long time. It was believed that flavour enhancers did not add any new taste of their own...
if less mushroom extract is used to reduce costs.
Non-MSG oyster sauce
Most of the oyster sauces available on the market contain added monosodium glutamateMonosodium glutamate
Monosodium glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate or MSG, is the sodium salt of glutamic acid, one of the most abundant naturally occurring non-essential amino acids....
(MSG). In recent years MSG-free varieties can also be found. The taste of MSG and non-MSG variants is similar as oyster sauce naturally contains large amounts of glutamate.
European oyster sauce
In 19th century French and English cooking, "oyster sauce" referred to a variant of sauce blanche flavoured with oysters, using a base of milk and melted butter rather than purely reducingReduction (cooking)
In cooking, reduction is the process of thickening and intensifying the flavor of a liquid mixture such as a soup, sauce, wine, or juice by boiling....
the oysters by cooking. The white sauce version was moistened with cream whereas in, brown oyster sauce, the cream was replaced with gravy. Common recipes using the sauce included "Steak and oyster sauce", documented as early as 1806, and "Cod and oyster sauce". This sauce was still being eaten in Australia in the 1970s.
Health
In 2001 the United Kingdom Food Standards AgencyFood Standards Agency
The Food Standards Agency is a non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for protecting public health in relation to food throughout the United Kingdom and is led by a board appointed to act in the public interest...
found in tests of various oyster sauces and soy sauce
Soy sauce
Soy sauce is a condiment produced by fermenting soybeans with Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds, along with water and salt...
s that some 22% of samples contained a chemical called 3-MCPD
3-MCPD
3-MCPD or is an organic chemical compound which is carcinogenic and highly suspected to be genotoxic in humans, has male anti-fertility effects, and is a chemical byproduct which may be formed in foods, the most commonly found member of chemical contaminants known as chloropropanols.It is...
(3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol) at levels considerably higher than those deemed safe by the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. About two-thirds of these samples also contained a second chemical called 1,3-DCP (1,3-dichloropropane-2-ol) which experts advise should not be present at any levels in food. Both chemicals have the potential to cause cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
and the Agency recommended that the affected products be withdrawn from shelves and avoided.
The joint Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) said it had taken emergency action to amend its food standards code to set a limit for 3-MCPD in soy sauce of 0.02 milligrams per kilogram, in line with European Commission standards which come into force in the EU in April 2002.
Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) singled out brands and products imported from Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Brands named in the British warning include Golden Mountain, King Imperial, Pearl River Bridge, Jammy Chai, Lee Kum Kee, Golden Mark, Kimlan, Golden Swan, Sinsin, Tung Chun and Wanjasham soy sauce.
In July 2001, the FSA issued another statement clearing Lee Kum Kee's name after the company produced laboratory certificates from accredited, reputable laboratories. These certificates show that Lee Kum Kee products now comply with the proposed EU limit for 3-MCPD.
http://www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/2001/jul/soysauce