February POM: Super Sale on Hoisin Sauce + Hoisin-Forward Recipes

Want to wow someone on Valentine's Day? Nothing says love like a project that produces a rare and coveted treat like cha siu bao. Yes, we've got Chinese chocolates (here and here), but to show your true devotion you've got to invest some time and effort.

Making cha siu bao isn't necessarily hard, but it does have several steps: making the fluffy, yeasty dough; making the juicy, caramelized cha siu roast pork; making the sweet but not too sweet sauce; and putting them altogether in one perfect package. The good news? You'll make enough bao to keep some, give some, and freeze some—the freezer stash reminding the object of your affection of your affection for days or weeks to come. 

In Kathy's multiple experiments developing this recipe, she found that, "As it turns out, the heart of a great chasiu marinade begins with oyster sauce and soy sauce. I'm using Megachef oyster sauce (gluten-free!) and Zhongba light and dark soy sauces, supplemented with a very special hoisin sauce (completely new to the USA!). Many mainland chefs omit hoisin sauce altogether, but The Mala Market's Guangwei Yuan hoisin has an important kick to it... red yeast rice powder! That's what gives this hoisin sauce its brown-red coloring, and it's also the cherry-red all-natural coloring traditional restaurants use in chasiu. Red yeast rice powder is a bit of a niche ingredient however, so while you may not keep it on hand for many other uses, you'll definitely reuse the hoisin sauce."
 

A few years ago we collaborated with the great Grace Young to celebrate Chinese New Year with some Chinese spareribs. Grace created this slightly sweet-and-spicy and wholly addictive BBQ  sauce using The Mala Market's Sichuan ingredients, then followed her tried-and-true method of making Cantonese BBQ ribs.

You really can't go wrong with a sauce made of  3-year Pixian doubanjiang, the fount of Sichuan umami, along with sweet wheat paste, hoisin sauce and a few other pantry staples, which together create a sticky, thick mala glaze for the ribs. 

Grace cooked her oven ribs to Chinese tastes, roasting under high heat for a short amount of time to produce a rib with chew. I then used her Sichuan sauce to cook ribs low and slow like they do in here in the South, in the oven about six times longer for a tender bite. You should do you, going either high and fast or low and slow depending on your desired mouthfeel. But don't mess with the sauce! It's perfect as is. 

And for those who don't know, Grace is not only the Stir-Fry Guru, she is also the 2022 James Beard Humanitarian of the Year, for her unflagging “work to save America’s Chinatowns amid Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) hate during the COVID-19 pandemic.”)

She is our hero.

Though hoisin sauce does love pork (see everything above), it also showers flavor on other proteins and vegetables. Here I used it as basically the only seasoning on a super-easy sheet-pan dinner of salmon and asparagus. 

I got this brilliant idea from our friend Maggie at Omnivore's Cookbook, who created this hoisin-olive oil glaze for grilling (or broiling) asparagus. I just gave the salmon fillets the same glaze and cooked them together on the same sheet pan. 

Fongchong is not a lover of either asparagus or salmon, but for her eating is all about the sauce—so this got eaten!