RECIPE

Cantonese Black Pepper Sauce

APRIL 9, 2021
[ SKIP TO RECIPE ]
In the middle of the conversation, my parents eyed the waiter heading towards our table. They said “get your napkins up” as the waiter put down the sizzling hot plate dish, and poured a brown gravy onto the hot plate, creating more steam which rose upwards because my parents made my sister and I form walls with the napkins around the table.

This is a classic move, I’ve observed, many Hong Kongers do whenever someone orders a dish that is served on a hot plate. I can only assume it’s because we don’t want the sauce to splatter onto our clothes. Well…. I actually have no idea. 

Nonetheless, it’s usually an exciting thing because the Sizzling Hot Plate Dish 鐵板餐 often means the food is going to be 香味, which directly translate to fragrant taste. Most of the time, we’d order this type of dish for beef. It could be a steak or some sort of stir-fry with veggies. It’s kinda of like an Eastern take on the fajitas, except the flavours are more complex. The most recognized dish in this category is probably the Black Pepper Beef. Honestly, I have not thought about it soon after learning that I could not have most Chinese dishes anymore because often the sauces are not gluten-free or wheat-free. That’s changed when Chinese Cooking Demystified did a tutorial on how to make the black pepper sauce from scratch.

It was then I realized that the sauce is actually quite simple to make! The best part was I already have all the ingredients (minus the shallot) in the pantry. Of course, I had to change up the aromatic ingredients since I cannot have garlic. Ideally, I want to use shallots in the recipe, but I think someone at my local grocery store mistakenly ordered a type of garlic that looked like shallots and hence I could not find a single bulb of shallot but half an aisle covered in two types of garlic. I resorted to using onions, which I don’t think it’d make too big of a difference? The end result was very spicy and tasty. 

This Black Pepper Sauce is more like a thick paste. You will need to mix in some water or broth to thin is out a bit. It is great for quick stir-fry dishes – like the the beef topping I did for tacos – braising meats, use as a dipping sauce or even just as a warm sauce! It tastes quite spicy on its own, but once you mix it with other ingredients as you cook it, the spiciness will become milder, and the black pepper taste will be more citrusy.

Recipe adapted from Chinese Cooking Demystified – see original recipe here.

Cantonese Black Pepper Sauce

Yield: A little less than 1 cup (250ml)

 

INGREDIENTS
    • 50g of whole black pepper
    • 15g of fermented black soybeans (I use Pearl River Bridge brand in a vacuum seal bag)
    • 1 tbsp of tamari (I use San-J Organic Tamari)
    • 1 tbsp of oyster sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee’s Panda Oyster Sauce, glass bottle with green lid)
    • ⅔ cup of water
    • ½ tsp of gluten-free miso (I use Miko Brand’s Dashi Miso with red border)
    • 1 tsp of cooking oil
    • 60g of onion or shallots, finely diced*
    • ½ tsp of salt
    • 2 tbsp of sugar

*Feel free to add 1 or 2 cloves of minced garlic, I omit it due to my garlic allergy

 
INSTRUCTIONS
  1. Freshly grind all the whole black peppercorn with a pestle and motor or a spice grinder. Set aside.
  2. Mash up the fermented black soybeans with a pestle and motor or a fork.
  3. In a bowl, mix together the Tamara, oyster sauce, water, sugar and miso.
  4. In a wok or a saucepan, heat up the cooking oil over medium heat. 
  5. Stir fry the onions until translucent, about 5 minutes.
  6. Mix in the ground black pepper and give it a stir until it turns into a dry paste.
  7. Pour in the bowl of sauce mixture. Stirring occasionally, let it cook until it reduces into a thick sauce.
  8. When you have achieve the right thicken for the sauce, turn off the heat. Stir in ½ teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Transfer the sauce into a clean bowl or container to let cool.

Store it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. When using the sauce to cook, I suggest mixing 1/3 cup of water or broth per 1 tablespoon of the black pepper sauce, and a pinch of sugar if it’s too spicy.

 

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