Make this homemade hoisin sauce recipe, and you’ll never feel the need to buy it from the store again. Use in stir-fries, marinades, glazes, and more!
Store-bought hoisin tends to be excessively salty, overly sweet, and disappointingly thick. Our recipe tastes sweet, salty, tangy, and downright delicious. Use this umami-rich sauce for chicken, salmon, ribs, tofu, and veggies.
Since perfecting this homemade hoisin sauce recipe, we’ve explored so many ways to use it. To date, we’ve used it to make glazed salmon, tossed it with tofu, and used it for hoisin sticky ribs. We also love using this sauce to make these chicken lettuce wraps.
Key Ingredients
- Garlic, ginger, and green onion: Add fresh flavor to our sauce. I especially love the ginger in this homemade sauce.
- Light tamari or soy sauce: The foundation of our sauce’s salty, savory flavor. Light tamari offers a cleaner taste, but light soy sauce works nicely.
- Maple syrup and molasses: Sweeten our sauce and balance the salty tamari.
- Peanut butter: Makes the hoisin taste more complex. However, the finished sauce does not taste like peanut butter. You can substitute tahini or almond butter.
- Gochujang: Replicates the complex flavor of fermented beans in traditional hoisin sauce. For a substitute, use miso paste and add a dash of your favorite hot sauce for optional heat. We also use gochujang when making our easy shrimp marinade.
- Rice wine vinegar: Just a little vinegar brightens the sauce and brings all of the flavors together.
- Chinese Five Spice: A warm and fragrant blend of star anise, fennel, Szechuan peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon. Look for this in the spice aisle of most grocery stores.
- Cornstarch: Thickens our sauce (optional, but recommended).
Find the full recipe with measurements below.
How to Make the Best Hoisin Sauce
Tip 1: Make in small saucepan. This recipe only takes about 15 minutes to make, and it all happens in a small saucepan. Sauté fresh garlic, ginger, and scallions until softened, then stir in everything left on your ingredient list. The peanut butter melts into the sauce, and the garlic and ginger perfume the sauce nicely.
Tip 2: Thicken your sauce. Our recipe includes cornstarch, which helps thicken the sauce. You can stick with our suggested amount or add more for a thicker sauce. (As written, the hoisin is slightly thinner than you might find with store-bought.)
Tip 3: Keep a jar on standby. This sauce makes weeknight dinners so easy. Whenever I have something like chicken or tofu (like our baked tofu) in the fridge and have no idea what to do with it, I reach for this sauce. Toss whatever you have in the fridge in some sauce and bake. Easy!
More Homemade Sauces
Hoisin Sauce (Better than Store-Bought)
- PREP
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- TOTAL
Homemade hoisin sauce is a thick, flavorful condiment popular in Chinese cuisine, particularly Cantonese cooking. It’s added to stir-fries, marinades, and glazes (think Peking duck!). I find store-bought hoisin too sweet, salty, and thick. Once you try this homemade hoisin, you’ll never need to buy it from the store again.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced or grated
One 1-inch thumb-size piece fresh ginger, finely minced or grated
2 green onions, whites and light green parts only, finely minced
5 tablespoons (65g) light tamari or light soy sauce, plus more to taste
5 tablespoons (65g) pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons (30g) molasses
1 tablespoon (20g) peanut butter, try homemade peanut butter
1 ½ teaspoons Gochujang, see notes
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice, see notes
1/4 teaspoon cornstarch
Directions
1Heat sesame oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the garlic, ginger, and green onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender and translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Set the saucepan aside to cool.
2Stir in soy sauce, maple syrup, molasses, peanut butter, Gochujang, rice wine vinegar, and the Chinese Five Spice. Return the saucepan to medium heat and, while stirring, slowly bring to a simmer. Taste the sauce and adjust with 1/2 tablespoon to 1 tablespoon of soy sauce if necessary.
3Make a cornstarch slurry by mixing 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch with 2 teaspoons water. Whisk the slurry into the sauce. As it simmers, the sauce will thicken. Once thickened, remove it from the heat and let it cool. Refrigerate your sauce for up to one month.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Storing: Your sauce can be refrigerated for up to 1 month. As it sits, it may separate. We store our sauce in an airtight glass jar, which allows us to shake it to combine before using it. The sauce also freezes well. Keep it in a freezer-safe container in the freezer for up to 3 months.
- Gochujang: Gochujang is a spicy Korean condiment made with rice and fermented soybeans. Substitute miso paste, and if you’d like to add some spice, add a dash or two of hot sauce or chili paste like sambal oelek.
- Adjusting to your taste: Feel free to adjust the spice level, saltiness, and sweetness to your taste. I love the heat from Gochujang, but you can substitute it with miso paste if you’d prefer.
- Thickness of the sauce: I like to keep this on the thinner side, which makes it more saucy when tossing it into stir-fries or slathering it over ribs. Increase the cornstarch for a thicker sauce.
- Gluten-free: Double check that all products are labeled gluten-free (especially the soy sauce or tamari) for gluten-free hoisin sauce.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
Well I know it says 1 month in refridge but now at almost 2 months its still amazing. Just cut up little cubes of high protein tofu and mixed with hoison sauce in bowl and then stir fried on medium heat in pan with a touch of sesame oil a short time. Already had steamed sauteed some baby bok choy with ginger and a tiny bit of soy sauce so added that in and warmed it all up and served on my leftover rice. Yummy! I have to eat low fodmap so no oinion or garlic for me so will keep making this hoison regularly.
This is so good! Not like the hoisin sauces you get at the store it is actually better! I did blend mine for the smooth consistency because I lazy chopped my veg but great recipe and look forward to now trying others on your website.
We are so glad you enjoyed it, Lorena!
Hello family…You are doing a great job to help us to cook delicious food..I believe that you will send me your recipes through my email. Thank you God bless you
I made this (doubled) for Hoisin Ribs (also on your site). I omitted the 5-spice as didn’t have any) but even so, it is soooooooo good. There’s that “umami” flavour that so many sauces miss – – – but this one has it in spades.
5*
So glad you enjoy it, Len! Thanks for coming back!
Thanks for the great recipe –I appreciate the Tips! I read several Hoisin sauce recipes and yours was the best!
That’s amazing! Thank you so much for coming back, Noori!
Just made my second batch and shared recipe with my loved ones. Its amazing!!! Thank you
Wow, that’s incredible!
I doubled the recipe for ribs and subbed tahini for peanut butter. Surprised how close it tastes to commercial hoisin. Very nice.
Won’t the sauce thicken once cooled?
A little, yes.
Amazing recipe. Had run out of store bought. Now will never use shop bought again! And I never write reviews but couldn’t not as was so good.
Amazing! We are thrilled you found us!
Had to make a number of substitutions due to allergies and not having the ingredients in my pantry and it was still delicious! Thanks for the recipe!
I am so happy it still worked out for you, Linda.
Hi, would this sauce be good as a dipping sauce ?
Definitely!
I’m looking for an alternative for Gochujang and miso. soy allergy. I know I can use coconut amigos, but it’s thin.
What could I use in place of the Chinese spice? I can’t have clove. I really wanna make this! It looks delicious!
Hi Teresa, You can leave it out. Or, adjust the sauce to taste with a pinch of cinnamon, ground fennel, and star anise (maybe just toss one whole one into the sauce to permeate a little). Chinese 5 spice also has Sichuan peppercorns, which you could add if you have it on hand.
Great recipe, very easy to follow! thanks
Wonderful, so happy you gave our recipe a try. Thank you for coming back.
Oh wow! Amazing!!!
So happy you enjoy it, Athena!
I would love to try this but am on a low sodium diet (1,500 mg daily). I do have a lower sodium soy sauce but wonder about the other ingredients. Can you make any suggestions?
You can try unsalted peanut butter and low sodium soy sauce.
So goood! It was a little salty so I added more maple syrup and I simmered it to the desired consistency rather than adding cornflour.
That’s awesome! Love that you found ways to adjust it to your liking. Smart call on the extra maple syrup and simmering – those are great fixes. So glad you enjoyed it!
Sounds amazing. Can I substitute anything for peanut butter? Nut allergies.
Tahini is a great sub. Here’s our tahini recipe or use store-bought.
Love this! Can’t wait to try it out.
Yay! That makes me so happy to hear. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!