Shao Hsing

[itch22]

I live in Ontario, Canada and more often than not it is not possible to get Shao Hsing from the LCBO. If one does not want to privately import a case, what kind of substitute could one use? "Cooking" Shao Hsing? Japanese sake?

[Gul_Dekar]

I've noticed that some Chinatown grocery stores in Toronto actually sell non-cooking chinese rice wines. Not sure how they get away with it tho. But I've tried using sake instead of Shao Hsing...and it works ok. Sake is a lot sweeter tho, I think.

[itch22]

In a place like China town, It'd be easy for a store keep to order a case and re-sell it in his shop and get away with it. I'll take a closer look next time I'm there.

[Big Bunny]

Dry Sherry is great.

I've had good results with Lustau Fino or Amontillado.

BB

[Samhill]

Definition of LCBO? Just curious.

[Gul_Dekar]

LCBO stands for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. We can only get liquor from LCBOs here.

[jo-mel]

I'm sure the 'real' Shaoxing must be best, but what is so terribly bad about using the cooking version? If you were drinking it -- as a wine, I could understand, but I assume you want to use it as an ingredient in a dish.

Would someone eating your dish be actually able to say ---"Hmmmm - this is cooking Shaoxing" ---- or "I see you used the real imported Shaoxing, not the cooking wine with the added salt."

Maybe it is me, and not having that acute of a palate, but I have used both and really could not tell which wine I'd used.

What do restaurants actually use?

[trillium]

The cooking version is very, very salty. So if you're using the wine with other salty things (say black beans for instance) then you could run into trouble. It takes a little more care not to end up with an over-salted dish. It is also less aromatic and flavorful then some of the better grades of "non-cooking" (I don't know anyone who drinks it!) wine. I'd use it if I couldn't get anything else though.

regards,

trillium

[jo-mel]

I wonder how much sodium the cooking ShaoXing actually has. The bottles only say 1.5% salt to 25 ounces. (This was on 2 different brands). I could find nothing on a 'google', but in one book on 'counts', they said that the supermarket 'cooking sherry' has 70 mgs of salt to 1/4 cup. That is 17.5 mgs to 1 T. ----Not too much.

But I wonder if the quality of the wine used, is 2nd rate knowing it is just to be used for cooking. I have some of the real stuff, but it is hard to compare quality when one is salted. I always tell my classes to just use dry sherry if they don't want the salted Shao Xing, and AAMOF, until you could get ShaoXing in this country, everyone used sherry.

I know the stores that don't have a liquor license (what Chinese grocery does?) use the salted stuff, because that is the law. But one local store had an earthenware crock bottle of Shao Xing -- Golden Star brand. It has the alcohol % (17.5) on the label, but no mention of salt. The only Chinese on the label says 'registered trademark', the brand, and the contents - 'Shao Xing Rice Wine'. I never uncorked it to see if it is salted. It is a beautiful dark brown, glazed shapely bottle, with raised etching and a red ribbon laced thu crockery loops. Beautiful!!

[jo-mel]

I was just in a Chinese grocery store, and I thought I would check out the cooking Shao Xing bottles --- and was I surprised!

Some of the bottles had the salt content, but the range was amazing. There were different brands -- A couple of different Pagodas, Yu Yee, and Harvest. Two of them had (if I remember correctly) 378 mg to a cup of the wine, one had 133 mg/cup and one of the Pagoda brands had 5.7 mg /cup/ HUH?? (misprint?) I didn't buy any of them to do a taste test.

But all in all, I found the sodium content lower that I thought. Even then, I would rather use my real stuff, as long as I have access to it, or sherry.

[Ben Hong]

Sherry is a great sub. What the hell, any alcohol would and will be a good substitute. Shao Shing was popularized simply because it was one of the very few "liquors" liqueurs, or wines to be widely distributed throughout a large part of China long ago. The Chinese cook will use whatever... rum, Scotch, rye, wine, sherries, local rotgut, etc. as long as there is an alcohol content. The word for spirits in Cantonese is "jiu". When someone rhymes off the standard marinating ingredients, soyu, tong, geng, jiu, (soy sauce, sugar, ginger, alcohol) there is no specificity of brands. Just alcohol. If it's strong spirits, weak wines, sweet liqueurs, whatever you have on hand, adjust accordingly.

[jo-mel]

Indeed, Ben ---- Many of my old books call for either wine, cooking wine, rice wine, gin or nothing at all.

[trillium]

I wonder how much sodium the cooking ShaoXing actually has. The bottles only say 1.5% salt to 25 ounces. (This was on 2 different brands). I could find nothing on a 'google', but in one book on 'counts', they said that the supermarket 'cooking sherry' has 70 mgs of salt to 1/4 cup. That is 17.5 mgs to 1 T. ----Not too much.

But I wonder if the quality of the wine used, is 2nd rate knowing it is just to be used for cooking. I have some of the real stuff, but it is hard to compare quality when one is salted. I always tell my classes to just use dry sherry if they don't want the salted Shao Xing, and AAMOF, until you could get ShaoXing in this country, everyone used sherry.

I know the stores that don't have a liquor license (what Chinese grocery does?) use the salted stuff, because that is the law. But one local store had an earthenware crock bottle of Shao Xing -- Golden Star brand. It has the alcohol % (17.5) on the label, but no mention of salt. The only Chinese on the label says 'registered trademark', the brand, and the contents - 'Shao Xing Rice Wine'. I never uncorked it to see if it is salted. It is a beautiful dark brown, glazed shapely bottle, with raised etching and a red ribbon laced thu crockery loops. Beautiful!!

Many states have different regs for wine and beer vs. the hard stuff, so if a place is selling beer they can sell Shao sing. That being said, I've found non-salted, high quality Shao sing at places that aren't selling any other obvious alcohol and have the bottles lined up with the cooking stuff. Basically I just buy it and don't ask questions, since I don't want to get anyone in trouble. The best stuff I ever bought was aged for 14 years and was from Taiwan. It was a much darker brown then I was used to seeing. Boy was I sad to see that bottle go.

Maybe I get carried away when I splash the wine in during stir-fries, I hardly ever measure (except when I was writing down notes for the eGullet class), but I once made some clams with black bean sauce that were inedible due to how salty they were. The only difference was that I was using cooking Shao sing not the straight stuff I was used to.

I respectfully disagree that anything with alcohol in it can substitute for Shao sing, I use it for the flavor it imparts not the ethanol it adds to the dish. That being said, I completely concur that one can make very tasty food with other liquor types. We make a very tasty beef stir-fry that has brandy sloshed into the pan and it's great...but it doesn't taste the same as if you'd added Shao sing.

regards,

trillium