[BOOK] Flavor Profile #1: Minsi Paste

Minsi Paste (面豉酱)

Introduction

Picture yourself a hundred years or so back, in the twilight of the Qing dynasty. You’ve just gone through the painstaking traditional process of making soy sauce: you’ve steamed the soybeans, you’ve mixed the koji, you’ve let it ferment. You tap it, and that very first spoonful’s called ‘touchou’ –i.e. the first press, the crème de la crème of soy sauce. As you continue to use your barrel of fermented soy sauce though, the product will, of course, continue to age. It first morphs into the familiar shengchou, or light soy sauce – that is, what you’d quite obviously recognize as ‘soy sauce’. As the weeks tick by though, the flavor gets deeper and the color gets darker, until you arrive at laochou – dark soy sauce. That dark soy sauce isn’t quite as all purpose as our less heavily fermented light soy sauce, but it also has its uses. It stains food a brilliant reddish-black color almost as well as turmeric can turn things yellow.

As you work through your dark soy to the very last drop of your barrel of soy sauce, you eventually hit… the dregs. That is, what’s left of the actual soybeans before they began their almost alchemical transformation into soy sauce.  But while those dregs might not look like much at first blush, if you grind them up they’ve got this wonderful deep sort of umami sort of reminiscent of Chinese black fermented soybeans. That ground up sauce is called Minsi paste. 

 Traditionally, in addition to taking the dregs and transforming it into a sauce, people would also ferment soy beans separately to create Minsi paste, e.g. the town Gulao (古劳) in nowadays Jiangmen city is famous for its Minsi production since Qing Dynasty and our recommended soy sauce brand (东古) is made by the factory that inherent the town’s most famous Minsi workshop. 

<These days, soy sauce production doesn’t look much like the traditional methods. Modern, industrialized processes require standardization, so producers tend to aim their sights directly at light soy sauce. To make dark soy sauce then, caramel coloring is added in, which stains food just as well – if not better – than the traditional sort. Unfortunately, using the modern methods end up leaving us without those umami-rich dregs.

So nowadays the dominant way to make Minsi paste is to ferment and age the soybeans directly. This method bears a striking resemblance to both the Northern Chinese way of making soybean paste as well as the Japanese way of making soy bean red miso. The latter is such a close match to Minsi paste that Japanese akamiso can be thought of as a direct substitute. If you want a more accurate match, try searching for the miso that are made with soy bean instead of rice or wheat. (To our understanding that Hatcho miso is a type and the representative kind of soy bean miso, Hatcho being a name of the producing place. So if you see Hatcho miso, it will be the soy one. The transliteration for soy miso should be "Mame Miso".) >

In isolation, Minsi paste’s already an important ingredient, but it’s if you take a step back and look at the broader array of fermented sauces in Cantonese cuisine that the paste begins to look increasingly foundational. You could even think of Minsi paste as a ‘mother sauce’ of sorts in Cantonese cuisine. Add sesame paste and spices, and it becomes Chu hou paste – a classic base for braising beef and pork. Add loshui master stock, and it becomes Char Siu sauce. Grind it together with garlic and add a milky seafood stock, and you get Hoisin sauce. 

So while ‘Hoisin’ and ‘Char Siu’ are increasingly becoming household words in the West, I feel as though Minsi paste seems to be slept on a bit. Yes, you wouldn’t want to use the stuff straight from the tin without seasoning (it’s quite salty). But treated right? The stuff is outrageously delicious. Together with a bit of sugar and aromatics, it can be an awesome base for steamed dishes, braises, stir-fries, and even the aforementioned sauces.

----------Two Minsi Recipes ----------

#1 Steamed Pork Belly with Minsi Paste

This is a dead simple dish that’s a good low effort way to round out a full meal. There’s really not many moving pieces here – you slice up some pork belly, marinate it with Minsi paste and a few other ingredients, toss it in a steamer, and… that’s pretty much it.

The only real key here is to thoroughly combine the pork belly with the marinade. You need to really get in there and rub the Minsi paste into the pork pieces – don’t be shy, get your hands dirty.

Ingredients:

• Pork Belly (五花肉), 250g
• Ginger, ~1/2 inch. Julienned. 
• Sliced Scallions (葱) 

For the Marinade

• Salt, 1/4 tsp
• Sugar, 1 tsp
• Cornstarch, 1 tsp (生粉)
• Light soy sauce, 1 tsp (生抽)
• Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine, 1 tsp (料酒/绍酒)
• Minsi (面豉) -or- Japanese red miso, 1 tbsp 
• Oil, to coat, 1 tsp (preferable peanut oil)

Process:

First slice your slab of pork belly into sheets, ~3 millimeters in thickness. Thinly julienne your half inch of ginger, reserve.

Now in a medium bowl, combine pork belly slices with all the ingredients for the marinade –except the oil. Thoroughly combine. Go in with your hands and get them dirty – you want everything to be thoroughly mixed and feel slightly sticky from the cornstarch.

Then add that 1 tsp of oil to coat the pork. The pork should be able to comfortably slide off your fingers – add more oil if that is not the case (but no more than 2 tsp in total). Marinate the pork for 15 minutes.

Add the julienned ginger to the pork bowl and quickly combine with your hands. Then dip the pork together with the ginger onto a plate. Spread the pork belly out into one even-ish layer, but no need to be too paranoid.

Bring a wok filled with water up (or your steaming set-up of choice) to a boil. Add the plate to a steaming rack, then cover. 

Steam on high for eight minutes. Once finished, sprinkle over sliced scallions. 

#2 Braised duck with Minsi and Taro

Besides marinades for steamed dishes, Minsi can also form the base of a braise. There’s a ton of different routes you could go here – pork belly is also common here, ditto with chicken. But probably the very most classic Minsi-braised dish in Cantonese cuisine would likely be duck.

This dish is a bit of a more intense one, and would feature as a larger ‘main’ for a meal.

Ingredients:

Main component

• Duck, bone in, cut into 1-inch pieces, 1kg. You could also use duck legs, of course.
• Taro (or other root vegetables), 300g. Potato or sweet potato would also be perfectly delicious. Treat in the same way we handle the taro. 

Seasoning

• Minsi paste (面豉) 3 tbsp
• Soy sauce (生抽) 2 tbsp
• Dark soy sauce (老抽) 1 tsp, optional
• Rock sugar (冰糖), 20g, or use granulated sugar
• Salt 1/4 tsp or to taste
• MSG (味精) a sprinkle

Spices and aromatics

• Star anise (八角) 4 pcs
• Bay leaf (香叶) 2 pcs
• Cinnamon stick (桂皮) 1 stick
• Ginger (姜) 2-inch peeled and sliced

Braising liquid

• Cantonese rice wine (九江双蒸酒/广东米酒), 100g, or use Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine
• Water 500g

Process:

Chop your duck into ~1 inch pcs.

Cut taro into 1.5 inch cubes.

Blanch the duck. In a wok or pot, put the duck in, add in enough water to submerge the duck, turn the heat on high, let the water come to a boil. When the water came to a boil, let it boil for 2-3 minutes. Then strain, and rinse off any remaining gunk on the surface.

Toast the duck. In a dry and clean wok, heat on medium high, toss in the duck. Stir and flip it for about 5-8 minutes, until the surface of the duck is dry and have some slight brownness.

Get a separate pot (either claypot or cast iron are perfect) and heat it up over a medium flame for ~30 seconds. This will be our braising pot. Add in ~1 tbsp oil and your sliced ginger - fry for ~1 minute, or until the ginger is slightly translucent.

Add in the duck, quick mix. 

Add in the spices and rice wine, let it sizzle for a couple seconds. 

Add in the water, sugar and soy sauce, bring it to a boil, then turn the heat to low. Cover, and let it simmer for a total of 1 hour.

While the duck is simmering, deep fry the taro. Heat up a wok of deep-frying oil to 175C, or until rapidly bubbling around a pair of chopsticks.

Add in the taro pieces, fry until slightly golden brown on the surface. Remove, strain, reserve.

After the braise has been going for 30 minutes, add in the Minsi paste, mix well. 

Add in the taro when there’s 20 minutes left on the braise. Flip it gently a couple times while cooking to make sure the taro is evenly covered by the sauce. 

With 10 minutes left in the braise, taste. Add salt if not salty enough, also optionally add in some dark soy sauce if the color is too light.

After braising for 1 hour, add in a sprinkle of MSG, gently mix, heat off and done. 

Optionally adding a couple tsp of sesame oil to give it a sheen because the sauce is very "starchy" with the semi-melted taro. 

Sprinkle on some scallion for color if you like. 

Notes:

• Remember to cut of the tip of the butt of your duck if using whole, the glands on it would impart an unwanted odor to the whole braise. 
• If you like, you can skip the deep-frying process and add in the taro (or your root vegetable of choice) directly. That said, it’s highly recommended to do the xtra deep-frying step as it would help the taro (1) hold its shape and (2) better absorb the favor.
• If going that route, add in the taro at the 30-minute mark instead. 
• The braise tastes even better after a day, so don’t be afraid to enjoy the reheated leftovers. Add a bit more water, soy sauce, and salt to taste if the sauce is running low. 
• Depending on the color of your Minsi paste, the braise may need a bit of dark soy sauce to help create a reddish brown color. 
• For blanching the meat, we’ve come to a conclusion recently that starting with cold water would help better draw out the blood. 
• For the braising liquid, the 600ml used in the recipe is for a 24-CM cast iron Dutch oven. You may need to adjust if your pot is bigger. The basic idea is water level should be as high as the duck. If you’re using something that has a hole in the lid (and thus the water would evaporate quicker), add in at least an extra 1/2 cup of water. You can always reduce on high during the final ten minutes of braising if you find it too liquidy.