Fermentation Condiments

This class is divided by kind of seasoning into seven branches. Those made by fermentation are sauces and pastes, vinegar, fermented curd and douchi, pickles, and chili bean pastes, and the basic seasonings are oils, salt, sugar and honey, and spices.

Sauces and pastes covers soy sauce, bean and flour pastes fermented from soybeans or flour, sesame paste, and aquatic sauces such as fish sauce. Soy sauce is mostly made from soybeans and wheat mixed with a koji mold starter and fermented; the matured mash is pressed for its liquid, which is then filtered and sterilised, and it comes in kinds such as light and dark soy sauce. Fish sauce is a liquid made by fermenting small fish or shrimp with salt and then boiling it. Fermented bean curd is usually fermented with a mucor mold and then cured in brine, wine or red yeast rice, and the common kinds are red, white and green. Douchi is made by soaking yellow or black soybeans, fermenting them, and then drying and steaming them, repeated several times, and is mostly used for seasoning.

Vinegar is a seasoning brewed from grain, fruit and other raw materials, by alcoholic fermentation and then by acetic fermentation, hence the saying that wine and vinegar share one source. By method it is usually divided into solid-state and liquid fermentation, where solid-state fermentation mostly gives black vinegar, and liquid fermentation gives red and white vinegar. Pickles are vegetables kept in salt or by lactic fermentation: northeastern suancai is cabbage pickled in salt, and Sichuan paocai soaks vegetables in brine in sealed jars. The sourness of pickled vegetables comes from lactic fermentation, so they are not counted as vinegar.

Chili bean paste is made by fermenting broad-bean halves and chilli peppers with salt; it is red, salty and hot, an indispensable seasoning in Sichuan cooking, and mapo tofu and twice-cooked pork both use it. Oils, salt, sugar and honey covers salt and monosodium glutamate, vegetable oil and animal fat, and white sugar and honey; spices means Sichuan pepper, star anise, cassia, black pepper, ginger, fennel, scallions and garlic, which are used to remove gaminess, add fragrance and bring out heat or numbing flavours.