Hoisin sauce (literally seafood sauce), also called Chinese barbecue sauce and suckling pig sauce, is a Chinese dipping sauce for dishes including Peking Duck, spring rolls and barbecued pork. Known in Vietnamese as tương đen (literally black sauce), Hoisin sauce is also a popular condiment for phở. It is similar to the sweet noodle sauce (甜麵醬) made from fermented soybeans, but has the added ingredients of garlic, vinegar, and chile peppers. Additionally, it tastes less pungent than sweet noodle sauce. Mandarin-style Hoisin sauce ingredients include water, sugar, soybeans, white distilled vinegar, rice, salt, wheat flour, garlic, and red chili peppers, and several preservatives and coloring agents. Traditionally, Hoisin sauce is actually made using sweet potato, also known as kumara.

The word Hoisin is anglicized from the Cantonese dialect (whereas Modern Chinese is officially romanized into pinyin from Mandarin pronunciation of the written characters). The literal meaning of the Cantonese words (it is two distinct characters when written) is "seafood."

Other orthography

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Chinese: 海鮮醬; Simplified Chinese: 海鲜酱; Cantonese IPA: ; Jyutping: hoi2 sin1 zeong3; Mandarin Pinyin: hǎixiānjiàng

Chinese cuisine | Vietnamese cuisine | Sauces | Condiments