Shaoxing Wine
Shaoxing wine, or shàoxīng jiǔ (绍兴酒), is a type of Chinese rice wine that hails from Shaoxing, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province famous for rice wine production. It’s a key ingredient in many dishes and will create that authentic Chinese restaurant flavor on your plate.
With early records mentioning it over 2000 years ago, Shaoxing Wine is one of the oldest forms of rice wine in China. The production process involves fermenting rice, water, and a small amount of wheat (note that it does contain wheat, so it is not gluten-free. If you are gluten-intolerant, check out the substitutions section towards the end of this post). Clear rather than cloudy, it has a dark amber color, with a mildly sweet, fragrant aroma.
The best substitutes for Shaoxing Wine are as follows:
Dry sherry – that’s right, just everyday cheap and cheerful dry sherry;
Mirin – a Japanese sweet cooking wine. If you use this, omit or reduce sugar called for in the recipe because Mirin is much sweeter than Chinese Cooking Wine. If there’s no sugar to omit, that’s fine, just know that the sauce will be a bit sweeter;
What is Shaoxing rice wine used for?
Amongst all the familiar Chinese foods that we’re accustomed to in the West, you’d be hard pressed to find a single dish on a Chinese restaurant menu that does not use Chinese cooking wine!
It is used in almost every stir-fried Chinese dishes for example Kung Pao Chicken, Hunan Chicken, Chilly garlic Prawns, Mapu Tofu, Drunken Chicken. Shaoxing Wine is particularly essential for hong shao or red-cooked dishes like Chinese Braised Fish (Hong Shao Yu) and Shanghai Style Braised pork belly (Hong Shao Rou). It appears in larger quantities in braised dishes, while a marinade or stir-fry usually contains only a tablespoon or two. It’s also used in noodle recipes such as Chow Mein, Choupsey and soup broths, like Wonton Soup and Chinese Corn Soup.
Does Shoxing Wine Contain Alcohol?
Chinese Cooking Wine usually has an alcohol content of between 15 – 20%. Because stir-fries are cooked quickly, the alcohol content does not necessarily fully evaporate. However, recipes only use a small amount of Chinese Cooking Wine – usually only 1 or 2 tablespoons for a stir fry that will serve between 3 to 4 people.
Based on this, the amount of alcohol per serving is probably 1 or 2ml at most, which is a minuscule amount (one bottle of regular beer by comparison contains about 15 – 20ml of pure alcohol). And you certainly cannot taste it!
If you are concerned about consuming a small amount of alcohol in food, then I would advise you to not eat any Chinese food from Chinese restaurants because Shaoxing Wine is such a key ingredient in Chinese cooking, that it is used in almost everything. Certainly in all the take-out favourites!
In fact, I would advise you not to eat Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Thai food from any restaurant because all these cuisines use cooking rice wines in a similar manner.