If you love sweet and tangy flavors, you’ll enjoy this. Plum sauce is a tasty dipping sauce that brightens many dishes. Let’s explore plum sauce and its many uses.
It’s often found in Cantonese cuisine. People use it to dip fried foods like spring rolls or noodles. Its light-brown, thick look and sweet yet sour flavor are perfect with these foods.
What is Plum Sauce?
So what is Plum sauce? Essentially, it is a thick sweet and sour sauce made from plums, sugar, vinegar and various seasonings. The base fruit gives this sauce such an intense fruity taste which is both sweet and slightly sharp at the same time due to some vinegar that adds tanginess thereby making for perfect harmony between these two flavors.
In the historical context of Chinese cuisine, plum sauce often accompanies dishes like Peking duck or spring rolls. It is interesting how this simple fruit-based sauce has travelled around the world and become part of different cooking traditions. Typically, plum sauces are smooth with slight syrup consistency hence can be used for dipping or drizzling over food items.
Culinary uses of Plum Sauce?
When it comes to the use of plum sauce, this sauce is very adaptable and gives various different dishes a unique taste. Some of the most frequently used varieties of plum sauces are those that are served as dipping sauces alongside spring rolls, egg rolls or dumplings. Usually appetizers like these have sweet-sour flavors which go well together with crispy textures.
Apart from that, meat glazed with this kind of sauce, especially when it is poultry works wonders too. What I do for instance is when roasting chicken or duck, I add some with a brush; then cook in the oven until crispy. Beautiful!
In stir-frying recipes too especially those involving vegetables mixed together with proteins such as pork, beef, tofu among others — adding one spoonful will totally change the dish by giving sweet spicy flavor notes. Also the sauce will caramelize due to the sugar, even better!
Is Plum Sauce the Same as Duck Sauce?
No, plum sauce and duck sauce are definitely not the same thing. Many will tell you otherwise! However, they can be confused because of how closely related they are in terms of use and flavor. They are both Chinese dishes that accompany items such as spring rolls, egg rolls and Peking duck among others but differ with regard to ingredients and taste.
Plum Sauce
Typically, plum sauce is produced using plums, sugar, vinegar and different spices. It possesses a strong fruity taste which is sweet as well as slightly tangy. The texture is generally smooth but dense hence making it perfect for dipping or glazing onto meat while cooking it such as chicken wings.
Duck Sauce
On the other hand duck-sauce can have many more ingredients than just those found in plums alone; therefore there is no singular recipe representing what constitutes “duck sauce.” Nevertheless commonly used fruit bases include apricot, apple, peach (or any combination thereof), mixed with sugar, vinegar and a spice blend until the desired consistency is reached. Then served alongside various Chinese dishes like fried rice, noodles and roast pork . The flavor resembles that of plum sauce but may be sweeter, less tangy depending upon the type of fruits added. While its richness often leads to lighter colored appearance when compared against thicker darker variants typical for example with prune sauces.