Why you’ll love this stir fry sauce:
This sauce is a great all-purpose stir-fry sauce to complement your weeknight stir-fry dinner.
- Aromatic & flavorful: As you grate those aromatic ginger and garlic, you’ll understand how much flavor goes into this sauce.
- Well-balanced: Rice vinegar brightens the flavors, brown sugar balances the saltiness and toasted sesame seed oil makes it simply irresistible!!!
- Versatile: It has a wonderful well-rounded flavor, perfect for any meat and vegetable combination.
No more store-bought stir fry sauce ever again! Because this homemade Chinese stir fry sauce is so much better, yet it’s easy to prepare!
Key Ingredients Notes:
This easy stir fry sauce recipe calls for simple ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen.
- Soy sauce – Use regular Japanese soy sauce, like Kikkoman. It’s the foundation of stir-fry sauce.
- Brown sugar offsets the saltiness of soy sauce. In a pinch, substitute white sugar.
- Rice vinegar – A little bit of acid brightens the flavors, so it’s important to add vinegar. Rice vinegar is milder vinegar, and if you don’t have it, substitute apple cider vinegar.
- Garlic – A must have ingredient for amazing stir fry sauce. Fresh garlic is good, but garlic paste works fine too.
- Ginger – Fresh ginger, or ginger paste is essential in this sauce. Without its complex and aromatic flavors, this sauce is just not the same.
- Sesame oil – While you can omit this aromatic oil, you’ll definitely miss out on the light nuttiness of this oil.
- Cornstarch thickens the sauce as it cooks, so it’s an important component of the sauce.
How to make Asian stir fry sauce:
It’s ridiculously quick and easy to make this stir-fry sauce!!!! Less than 5 minutes, and you’ll be done!
- Grate ginger and garlic into a liquid measuring cup.
Pro Tip:
A Microplane zester makes grating ginger and garlic so much easier!! Also, frozen ginger grates so easily. No need to peel it, just throw a whole ginger root into a freeze bag and store it in the freezer. And grate the ginger frozen!
- Add all the remaining ingredients and stir well.
How to store stir-fry sauce
This Asian stir-fry sauce is a perfect meal-prep item!
- FRIDGE: Store homemade stir fry sauce in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
- FREEZER: You can also freeze this sauce in an airtight container, or freezer bag for up to 3 months.
When ready to use, shake well. You’ll notice white sediment on the bottom, it’s normal! It’s just cornstarch.
FAQs:
This recipe makes enough sauce for stir-frying about 4 cups of any combination of vegetables and/or seafood, chicken or beef.
Feel free to double up the recipe, if you want to freeze it in batches.
If you prefer a thicker stir fry sauce, coat the protein of choice (i.e. pork, chicken, etc) in cornstarch before cooking, as I’ve done in my pork stir fry.
Ways to use this sauce
Now that you’ve mastered this versatile sauce, you can make so many delicious meals!
- Chicken: This Chinese Chicken Stir Fry is a perfect weeknight dish in less than 30 minutes!
- Beef: Easy Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry is another must-try weeknight meal that is better than a take-out.
- Pork: Change things up with this delicious Pork Stir Fry, a quick one-pot meal for a win!
- Salmon: Re-purpose leftover salmon into a healthy Salmon Stir Fry over a bed of glass noodles.
Easy All-Purpose Stir Fry Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 garlic cloves grated
- 2- inch ginger grated
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 2 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- ½ cup water
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
Instructions
- Grate ginger and garlic using a microplane zester.
- Combine all the ingredients in a 2-cup liquid measuring cup. Mix until well combined.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
* Disclaimer: All nutrition information are estimates only. Read full nutrition disclosure.
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Reader's Reviews
April Helleur says
Hi there, I hate to say it but my other half and myself don’t like garlic very much, so does it make a lot of difference if we leave it out of the stir fry sauce. Thanks.
Dale says
How much do you add to each stir fry
Shinee says
Hi, Dale! Thanks for your question. This recipe makes enough sauce for about 4 cups of vegetables and protein.
Boc choy says
Excellent! Love the tip on freezing the ginger making it so easy to grateful.
Boc Choy says
Edit– grate not grateful– app auto corrected my post:)
Shinee says
So glad you found this tip useful. Thanks for your feedback!!
Tom says
Made this last night, compliments from everyone. Simple and quick, perfect!
Shinee says
Yay, so happy you tried my recipe and that everything loved it! Thanks for your feedback, Tom!
Mona W says
This is a great, all-purpose recipe. I tripled this sauce, to have extra in my fridge or/and to freeze. I did cut back 1/3 on the brown sugar because we don’t like things real sweet,…..so 4 Tablespoons to triple. It was perfect for us, and so very easy.
I too always have frozen ginger in the freezer. I just grated a big pile and didn’t measure for this recipe. Might add a bit of crushed red pepper in the future.
Thank you Shinee-D! Our pork tenderloin-lots-of-veggies stir fry was excellent!
I marinated the pork but just guessed at the amount of sauce to add to the pork marinade and the veggies. The dish was perfectly salted. My husband inhaled it and every bite was consumed.
Shinee says
Mona, thank you so much for your sharing your feedback! So happy you loved the recipe.
Terri Hutchinson says
This sauce seemed to over whelm the broccoli, beef, mushroom stir fry. Not bad, just not yummy.
Shinee says
Thanks for sharing your feedback, Terri.
Amadito Gerolaga says
can we use it in any kind of stir fry ?
Shinee says
Yes, absolutely!!
Barbra says
Very nice stir fry sauce, made it to complement my vegetable white rice dinner, good flavor. (6/22/2022)
Shinee says
So happy you tried and loved it, Barbra!!
Rita says
Hello,
Thank you for this amazing recipe. I was wondering how to make the sauce a bit more spicier? please let me know. Thank you.
Shinee says
Hi, Rita. Glad you like the sauce. To make this sauce spicy, I’d simply add your favorite spicy sauce, like Sriracha.
Mary Michael says
None of the sauce recipes I find on line have the taste of the sauces used on he East Coast.I was told the sauces in PA and DE are Cantonese. Any ideas would be most welcomed I am especially fond of things like pork lo mien.. Thank you.
Shinee says
Hi, Mary. Thanks for reaching out. I’m not Chinese, so I can’t give a proper advice on this. But here’re two of my favorite Chinese recipe blogs that might be a better help: The Woks of Life and Omnivore’s Cookbook. They’re both a fantastic resource of Chinese cuisine.