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Simple homemade Chinese-style black bean sauce – made with fermented black beans (sometimes known as salted black beans). The beans just need a short 30-60 minute soak, then they’re ready to be made into a quick, rich, umami stir fry sauce.
“The amount of pepper surprised me but it really works to give the sauce a perfume and bite. I did replace the sugar with Kecap Manis.”
Nicky’s Notes
I love making stir fry sauces, as they’re usually so simple – calling for little more than a splash of various ingredients from a number of bottles, plus a little garlic and ginger.
Black bean sauce always intrigued me though, as it contains something I’d never used before. Black beans of course.
Now we’re not talking tinned or dried black beans. Black bean sauce calls for fermented black beans, also known as douchi. These are black soy beans that have been fermented and salted.
I’ve got to admit, I didn’t really want to go to the (6 month+) effort of fermenting black beans myself, but fortunately you can buy them in packs, ready fermented!
Table of Contents
📋 Ingredients
Most of the ingredients for black bean sauce are very easy to source from practically any mid-size supermarket. It’s just the beans which may be a little more difficult to find.
You should be able to pick them up at any Asian supermarket, or if you don’t have one nearby, then Amazon also sells them.
We only need 4 tablespoons of fermented black beans to make a cup of black bean sauce (which should serve about 4 people), so I’d advise going with the smaller packet, unless you’re looking to make LOTS of black bean sauce.
- The red packet (<–affiliate link) shown below is a 100g pack. I use about a third of this pack to make a jar of black bean sauce.
- The white pack (<–affiliate link) is 500g! I bought a big pack because I knew I’d be doing lots of testing.
Fortunately they last for ages. An opened pack should be stored in a sealed container in the fridge. They should happily last for a year in there.
🧑🍳 Abbreviated Recipe
Full recipe with detailed steps in the recipe card at the end of this post.
Soak the black beans in cold water for about an hour, then drain and rinse well. Squash most into a rough paste, leaving a few whole. Fry with garlic and ginger, add the rice wine, soy, vinegar, sugar, pepper and stock and simmer for 5 minutes, then thicken with a little cornflour slurry.
Pro Tip
- The sauce will be on the salty side, but once you’ve fried it up with meat and vegetables, it will tasteperfectly balanced. You can use reduced sodium stock if you’re worried about it being too salty for your taste.
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Pin It🍽️ How to use it
- Stir fried with chicken, tofu or vegetables
- Stir fried with beef and vegetables for a tasty beef in black bean sauce ⬇️
If you don’t want to use the sauce right away, you can cool it, then store in a sealed container/jar in the fridge for 2 weeks.
📺 Watch how to make it
Black Bean Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp fermented black beans
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- 1 tbsp minced ginger
- 2 tbsp Shaoxing Chinese rice wine or use dry sherry
- 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp rice vinegar
- 2 tsp granulated or caster sugar
- ½ tsp ground black pepper
- 180 ml (3/4 cup) chicken or vegetable stock
- cornflour cornstarch slurry – made of 1 tablespoon cornflour, mixed with 3 tablespoons cold water
Instructions
- Start by soaking the fermented black beans. Place in a bowl and cover with cold water. Leave to soak for one hour, then rinse and drain.4 tbsp fermented black beans
- Once drained, give the black beans a bit of a mash with the back of a fork. I like to mash up about three-quarters and leave the rest whole.
- Add the sesame and rapeseed oil to a small saucepan. Heat over a medium heat.1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
- Add the garlic, ginger, and black beans and fry for one minute, stirring often, until fragrant.3 cloves minced garlic, 1 tbsp minced ginger
- Add the rice wine, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, pepper, and stock.2 tbsp Shaoxing Chinese rice wine, 2 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1 tsp rice vinegar, 2 tsp granulated or caster sugar, ½ tsp ground black pepper, 180 ml (3/4 cup) chicken or vegetable stock
- Stir together, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes, until slightly reduced.
- Stir in the cornflour slurry to thicken the sauce, then turn off the heat.cornflour
- Use right away, or cool, cover and refrigerate for up to two weeks.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This black bean sauce recipe was first published in July 2023. Updated since with improvements and for housekeeping reasons.
🥫 More sauce recipes
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Hi Nicky,
I just happened to have no black bean sauce and there is no Asian supermarket where I live. I did not want to wait for a webshop delivery, so I looked for a recipe on the internet. Yours came up almost instantly and it sounded so good I decided to make it. I had all necessary ingredients, it was really easy to follow the instructions and the outcome was awesome. The recipe is a definite keep, thanks for sharing. Love it!
Fantastic recipe. Much better than any store bought version.
The amount of pepper surprised me but it really works to give the sauce a perfume and bite. I did replace the sugar with Kecap Manis.
What is kecap manis?
This is great as having a husband who is gluten f we made this with tamari and it was delicious. Thank you for this x
thanks so much for posting this – I wanted to make a gluten free black bean chicken dish and now i know how ! All the shop sold ones use regular wheat based soy sauce in them.
I omitted the corn flour and used it when using the sauce in the final dish – worked great