On rare occasions we can taste an Asian dish that is not accompanied by any kind of sauce. Do you know the importance of sauces in Asian cuisine?
Sauces in Asian cuisine
Whether we talk about Asian cuisine in general, or if we focus on Chinese or Hong Kong food, sauces are a fundamental element in the elaborations. In fact, you surely know many sauces from typical Chinese cuisine, such as sweet and sour sauce or soy sauce.
Sauces for steamed food in Asian cuisine
In China’s gastronomic culture, food is often steamed. Its result is very light due to its philosophy of health care, since this way of cooking seeks to enhance the originality of the raw materials, but limits the flavor. Therefore, it is always accompanied by some sauce.
The typical sauces for steamed dishes are generally derived from soy sauces. With the soy sauce base you can add more ingredients such as vegetables and spices, such as Chinese chives or ginger and various peppers. This mixture of ingredients results in a pleasant sauce. Although cooking soy sauce with water and other ingredients on the fire is a little more complicated, the flavor of the sauce will be more palatable.
At The One Restaurant we prepare our different soy sauces cooking in the most artisanal way. To avoid adding artificial seasonings, we add lots of vegetables and consommés, thus obtaining full flavors.
All these processes take longer, but the result is very favorable, not only in terms of taste, but also for health.
Special sauces for fried dishes
There is also another type of special sauces to accompany the fried foods. In our life it is inevitable that, when tasting a good plate of fried vegetables, meat or seafood, we will be attracted by the smell and its crisp flavor.
For this reason, at Restaurante The One we not only take care of the raw materials, the frying oils or the frying technique so that they always come out with the minimum amount of oil, we also carefully pamper the sauces to accompany the fried foods.
One of the best known sauces in Asian cuisine is the typical sweet and sour sauce, which at The One we prepare “atypically”. That is, instead of mixing only the ingredients and abusing the sugar, we add different citrus vegetables to achieve a more complete and subtle final flavor.
We offer various options of sauces to accompany a good seafood in battered, such as a sesame sauce. Sesame sauce has been a success, our customers are delighted and surprised by it!
A lot of mayonnaise is also used in modern Hong Kong cuisine. But in The One restaurant, instead of using normal mayonnaise, we use mayonnaise from Japan, which does not have saturated fat and its flavor is softer.
Other special sauces
In The One restaurant we have other sauces that are essential for our dishes. We talk about the sauces prepared to finish the dishes.
For example, the Asian vinaigrette sauce for pork ribs, which have a sweet and sour flavor but has nothing to do with the typical sweet and sour.
On the other hand, we do not buy the soy sauce for making steamed fish directly, we prepare it with our recipe and broth.
Another example is the black pepper sauce that we use for the beef fillet steak: a reduction of broth with different peppers that does not contain any kind of cream. It has a concentrated flavor, but much lighter.
Sauces with tradition at The One
You may be very curious about our sauces.
All sauces come from other generations of the Cheng’s family. Their sauces were born as the fruit of more than 50 years of professional life traveling around the world.
And now, chef Dave Cheng, with his culinary talent and Xiang Xu’s experimental design techniques, has developed and evolved sauces using always-thought-out health-care techniques.
There is a very important sauce culture throughout Asia. Asians eat almost any dish with sauces, but always dipping a little sauce without actually finishing it, helping the body not consume too much sodium and sugar. In this sense it is very different from the Mediterranean culture.
At The One we are experts in making sauces that adapt to the varied palates of international clients. Although we know that each one has a different taste, in The One restaurant, you will find your perfect sauce.
