My multipurpose garlic sauce

Vietnamese version (bản tiếng Việt): click here!

Sauces and dressings play an important role in flavor of our dishes. Your chicken nuggets are less tasty without a barbeque dipping sauce, or your salads are so flavorless without some vinegar or some ranch dressings. In some case, sauce and dressing do save the whole dish.

Knowing the importance of sauces and dressings in cooking, I wonder if there is a sauce
that I can apply to many dishes. The answer is… possible! Therefore, I create myself a
multipurpose garlic sauce that is good for marinating, stir-fry, coating, or for salads (when combined with some lime juice or vinegar). That is why I named it a multipurpose garlic sauce.

The inspiration for this garlic sauce came from my desire to make highly-addictive Korean Fried Chicken that I have had for a few times at Left Wing – a local wings stop in Mesa, Arizona. The secret, I think, is a lot of garlic infused in the sauce combined from soy sauce, honey or sugar, some M.S.G and a pinch of salt.

Ingredients: (for 3/4 cup of sauce)

• Soy sauce: ½ cup (or 8 tablespoons)
• Oyster sauce: 6 tablespoons (or mushroom sauce – a vegetarian version of oyster sauce)
• Cooking oil: just enough to coat the saucepan
• Garlic: 6 cloves
• Shallot: ½ of the big shallot
• Honey: 6 tablespoons
• Mushroom bouillon powder (or M.S.G): 2 teaspoons
• A pinch of salt
• Ground black pepper: to taste
• Sesame oil: 1 tablespoon
• Tapioca flour: 2 teaspoon (optional)
• Water: ¼ cup (optional)

Preparation:

• Finely chop (or mince) the shallot and garlic.
• Place a small saucepan on medium heat, add a touch of oil just enough to cover the bottom of the saucepan. When the oil is hot, add the chopped shallot and garlic and stir until fragrant.
• Then add all the seasonings into the saucepan and bring it to gentle boil with constant stirring to avoid burning (might want to reduce the heat to medium-low).
• When the mixture starts boiling, reduce the heat and simmer it for another 5 minutes and the fluidic sauce is ready to use. If you want a thick and viscous sauce, in a separate small bowl, homogenize the tapioca flour in water and quickly add the slurry to the gentle boiling sauce (prior the simmering step) with vigorous stirring to avoid local thickening. When the sauce boils again, reduce the heat and simmer for another 5 minutes.
• After that, turn off the heat and let it cool down and store in a glass jar in a refrigerator.

Total time: 10 minutes

Notes:

• The recipe can be made vegan or vegetarian if you use the mushroom sauce (instead of oyster sauce) and scaled up for a larger batch.
• The fluidic sauce (without tapioca flour or any thickening agents) is good for marinating as the meat would absorb the seasoning easier, while the thickened sauce is great for stir-fry and coating or combining with vinegar/lime juice for salad dressings.
• In case you want to have a smooth sauce, filtrate to remove the garlic and shallot so that the sauce could be preserved for a longer time. Or replace the garlic and shallot with garlic powder and onion powder (and no need to use cooking oil).
• In case you don’t have tapioca flour in the kitchen, corn starch is a great substitute. With corn starch, use half amount of tapioca flour listed in the recipe. Potato starch, all-purpose flour or rice flour should not be used as substitute as they do not give a transparent and glossy appearance for the sauce.