Duck, Duck, Sauce

[Fat Guy]

Today my wife and 2.5-year-old son were on the way home from the American Museum of Natural History and phoned in a lunch order. He had requested steamed white rice with duck sauce.

No problem, I thought. I have leftover rice and can just heat it up in the microwave (add a couple of tablespoons of water and cover loosely; it steams up really well). And we always save those little plastic packets of duck sauce from when we get Chinese-food delivery. Every time, they give us a dozen of them and we use maybe one. Right in the cheese drawer there should be a villion of them.

Woops. It seems that, just this past week, we cleaned out the refrigerator and discarded all the duck sauce. No duck sauce in the house.

Of course I could have just said, sorry kid, no duck sauce today. But he's had a cold (probably a couple of colds) for almost two weeks and I wanted to indulge him. I also could have run out to a nearby Chinese restaurant and asked for a few packets. I had 20 minutes. I could have done it.

Instead, I decided to make duck sauce. How hard could it be? After all, I'm supposed to be an authority on Asian restaurants. I should be able to make the most basic condiment in the Chinese-American repertoire.

I vaguely knew that duck sauce is based on apricot, or was it plum, or peach? I had a jar of apricot jelly in the refrigerator, so I knew I'd be able to do produce something with at least the right color. I did some Googling and found quite a few recipes for duck sauce, none of which sounded like they'd produce anything remotely like the orange stuff in the Chinese-restaurant packets. And it's not relevant to me whether those recipes are better than the packet stuff, because I'm trying to reproduce what's in the packet -- that's what has been requested.

So I searched for the ingredients in commercial duck sauce. On Wikipedia, I found a photograph of a packet of duck sauce from the Yi Pin Food Products Corporation in Brooklyn, New York, which I believe is the duck sauce that's typically included in Chinese-food takeout orders in these parts. I was able to make out the ingredients list: water, sugar, corn syrup, starch, peach, apricot, salt, vinegar, guar gum, and a bunch of colorings and preservatives.

I took a small empty jelly jar and added a couple of tablespoons of apricot jelly, a tablespoon of hot tap water, a splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt. I shook vigorously and tasted. It wasn't exactly what I was after but it was quite close. Still, it wasn't duck sauce yet.

I played around with the ratios a bit and eventually realized that what it needed was a little bit of bitterness. So I added about a teaspoon of orange marmalade. That really did the trick. All of a sudden, I had duck sauce. At least, it was close enough to fool a 2.5-year-old kid.

Has anybody else attempted to make duck sauce at home?

[project]

I'm willing to make it.

I'm wanting to make it.

I'm waiting to make it.

I'd like to know how to make it.

But I know I don't know how to make it.

I have a stack of books on Chinese cooking, and I gave up on those, or any books, telling me how to make it.

And all that is just one small special case of a general situation:

I don't know how to make anything served in American Chinese restaurants.

I don't even know how to cook the rice.

I do know how to cook rice, and it's fine, but it's not like in the restaurants.

I don't know how to cook the dumplings, egg rolls, hot-sour soup, fried rice, Szechwan Chicken, Shredded Pork with Garlic Sauce, Beef with Orange Flavor, General Tso's Chicken, Sweet Sour Pork, or anything else like the restaurants do.

E.g., essentially every recipe I see for a dish like Szechwan Chicken comes out way too dry.

The dishes in the restaurants have a lot of sauce that helps flavor and succulence and is good for flavoring a side dish of rice, but the recipes are just obsessed with making the dishes as dry as possible. Big mistake. Huge.

Tools, the right tools?

Wok?

I have a wok, 14" in diameter, from China, sheet steel.

Heat source?

Outside I have a rugged propane burner that puts out 140,000 BTUs per hour.

The closest I've ever come to making anything either good or like in the restaurants was Moo Shi Pork as in

Joyce Chen, 'Joyce Chen Cook Book', J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1962.

Her recipe is good, but the restaurants use a greater variety of vegetables, and I don't have a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about what they are doing.

In some ways, Chen's recipe may be better than in the restaurants, but the restaurants get a wider range of flavors.

You tried duck sauce; for Hoisin Sauce or Oyster Sauce -- I wouldn't try before getting the basics right. I don't even know how to make the mustard sauce used for dipping egg rolls.

Here are some of the apparent obstacles:

Old media is locked into assuming that, of course, no one would ever want to learn anything from a TV show. Instructional is taboo, a dirty word. Instead, the media wants to follow the principles of formula fiction where they create for the viewers a vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience of imagining that they are cooking great food, easily, and are the center of attention and admiration.

So, watch and watch and watch, maybe learn how to smash garlic and shout "Done!", and, then, call out for carry-out.

America's Test Kitchen is a shining exception, but their content on Chinese cooking is meager and not their best quality.

There is a norm: Everything should be easy. If it is not really easy, then pretend that it is. So, in particular, omit careful measurements.

A claim is: Instead of measuring, should pursue individual art, but (A) when I try that, the results are best flushed, and (B) the results in the restaurants are surprisingly similar and, thus, likely not the result of individual art.

This claim is just an excuse, and, then, I waste time, don't learn anything, and get torqued.

An argument is: The restaurant cooks don't measure. Well, they don't use Western measuring cups and spoons, but they cook the same dishes so often that they can measure well enough by eye, but that can't be communicated in a few words in a recipe, and measurements with cups and spoons can.

This argument is just an excuse, and, then, I don't learn anything and get torqued.

An argument is: Precise measurements are not sufficient. Right: But they help reduce the variability and permit getting closer to the target. Nearly 200 years of knowledge in chemistry shows that measurements help a lot, and clearly cooking is close enough to chemistry that measurements should help in cooking, also. In addition, I have a cookbook about 80 years old intended for American kitchens, and that book is very careful with measurements.

This argument is just an excuse, and, then, I don't learn anything and get torqued.

A standard comment is that the restaurants serve "cloyingly sweet" sauces and use too much oil and, thus, do work that is not worth learning or reproducing at home.

But, they are commonly still in business for years in the same location, right?

So, likely they are doing things that a lot of people like.

This comment is just an excuse, and, then, I don't learn anything and get torqued.

An claim is that Oriental cooking requires special Oriental spirituality that can only be acquired by long, dedicated, ascetic apprenticeship under an Oriental master and is usually beyond Western culture.

That claim reminds me of the Oriental game of Nim as in the book

Courant and Robbins, What is Mathematics?

that has a good algorithm for winning!

The books on Chinese cooking overwhelmingly want to claim to be authentic, i.e., direct from China.

Apparently the book publishers see no hope for selling a book showing people how to cook what is in the American Chinese restaurants.

So, someone trying to learn buys yet another book on Chinese cooking, finds nothing like what they like in the restaurants and don't like what is in the book, wastes time, money, effort, and calories, gets torqued, and pursues something else.

On my list of projects to-do is a series on DVD and/or the Internet on how to cook the popular dishes in the restaurants. So, the series will have to have a lot of video clips, some very specific details on ingredients, some careful measurements of weights, volumes, times, and temperatures, and good descriptions of colors and appearance.

For this, I will have to hire some chefs in the restaurants and have them teach me the dishes. Then I will document how to do the work so that others can do it.

That's a lot of effort just to learn to cook some Chinese food as in the carry-out restaurants.

[heidih]

I don't have your point of reference in terms of the duck sauce packets, but I make something extremely similar although I add either a splash of good soy or a squeeze of hoisin depending on how sweet the jam was. My jam recently is either a tart homemade plum or a commercial bitter orange. The kids love it with potstickers and eggrolls.

[mtigges]

Round these parts (Vancouver, BC - pretty serious chinese food scene) it's called plum sauce. I've never heard the term "duck sauce".

And as an aside, due to my ignorance, I'm very underwhelmed by this thread. I was hoping for details on some fantastic demi-glace you made with a duck carcass or something. Oh well.

[DTBarton]

For mtigges: Duck sauce is what a sweet/fruit sauce served in American/Chinese restaurants is called. You get it and hot mustard with egg rolls. All Chinese american restaurants have 2 million small plastic packets of it on hand (I think it's a law).

Personally, I don't like the Duck sauce packets, too sweet and cloying. God forbid you put it on duck, but i guess you could rub it on the duck skin before cooking.

Haven't tried to make it. However, recently the wife showed up with a store bought bottle of a similar item. The brand is Maesri and the product is Authentic Thai spring roll sauce. http://www.maesribrand.com/Bottle.htm

This stuff is really good. I notice that the first bottle on the list is plum sauce (a la mtigges) and it looks similar. The spring roll sauce is not as thick and sweet as Yi-Pin or Wa-Yoan duck sauce packets and the fruit flavors are much more real and pronounced.

I think she got it at Whole Foods.

[judiu]

For mtigges:  Duck sauce is what a sweet/fruit sauce served in American/Chinese restaurants is called.  You get it and hot mustard with egg rolls.  All Chinese american restaurants have 2 million small plastic packets of it on hand (I think it's a law).

Personally, I don't like the Duck sauce packets, too sweet and cloying.  God forbid you put it on duck, but i guess you could rub it on the duck skin before cooking.

Haven't tried to make it.  However, recently the wife showed up with a store bought bottle of a similar item.  The brand is Maesri and the product is Authentic Thai spring roll sauce.  http://www.maesribrand.com/Bottle.htm

This stuff is really good.  I notice that the first bottle on the list is plum sauce (a la mtigges) and it looks similar.  The spring roll sauce is not as thick and sweet as Yi-Pin or Wa-Yoan duck sauce packets and the fruit flavors are much more real and pronounced.

I think she got it at Whole Foods.

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Saucy Susan, a sweet-tart sauce, meant, I think, for Bar-B-Que or ham glaze, makes a decent approximation of Duck Sauce when jazzed up slightly. Also works well as a dipping sauce for meatballs.

[nliedel]

My favorite recipe for Duck Sauce is in one of the Molly Katzen cookbooks. I'm thinking, "Moosewood," but it could easily be, "The Enchanted Broccoli Forrest." It's not like in restaurants, it's dark and slow simmered. I just love it. Not authentic in the least, I'm sure, but I'll take delicious.

[mtigges]

Oh, we have the packets. Millions of them. They exist in every kitchen drawer throughout the land. (Except those that refuse to eat from Canadian (or American) "Chinese" restaurants.) It's just that it is called plum sauce. So, even though it tastes nothing like plums, that's what I presumed that it (nominally) was.

In fact it's so prevalent that if you order a roast duck at even a good Chinese restaurant you get it. But it's usually much better than the packets. Still doesn't make duck taste better though (IMO).

[prasantrin]

In fact it's so prevalent that if you order a roast duck at even a good Chinese restaurant you get it.  But it's usually much better than the packets.  Still doesn't make duck taste better though (IMO).

←

I don't think I've ever received plum sauce with roast duck at a good Chinese restaurant. I wonder if it's because they think I'm Chinese. Do they give plum sauce to the Chinese folks, too?

I wonder if one wouldn't get better results with something like ume preserves rather than peach or plum. Because ume is sort of peachy plummy apricoty (I've heard it referred to as both Japanese apricot and Japanese plum), and I wonder if ume is the flavour Yi-Pin is trying to replicate with their use of peaches and apricots.

[mtigges]

I don't think I've ever received plum sauce with roast duck at a good Chinese restaurant. I wonder if it's because they think I'm Chinese. Do they give plum sauce to the Chinese folks, too?

Yes they do. I am married into an otherwise Chinese family, and I've observed that the little dish of plum sauce is not just for my "benefit". Though I should point out that this is concerning Hong Kong/Cantonese food. And to be clear, they don't give out packets, they have a small dish filled with the stuff intended for use by the entire table. It's largely ignored except by those curious enough to sully their fatty goodness with it.