hoisin sauce

1 3.9

A thick sweet Chinese sauce used to add flavor to meat and stir-fry

noun
/ˈhɔɪsɪn sɔs/

: salsa hoisin

You can enhance the flavor of your stir-fry by adding a few tablespoons of hoisin sauce.
a tablespoon of hoisin sauce
a cup of hoisin sauce
a teaspoon of hoisin sauce

The Chinese cuisine has soy sauce, hoisin sauce, fish sauce.

Examples

Then I'm going to add in a whole jar of rich hoisin sauce and just give that a mix.
The Chinese cuisine has soy sauce, hoisin sauce, fish sauce.

Harvard University
The recipe calls for combining chicken with hoisin sauce for a delicious marinade.
Many people enjoy dipping spring rolls in hoisin sauce as a complement to the dish.

Synonyms

hoisin

vshoisin sauce

2 3.9

A thick sweet Chinese sauce made from soybeans and garlic

is sweeter, tangier, and mainly used as a condiment or marinade

How Sweet

plum sauce

2 1.6

hoisin sauce

1 3.9

teriyaki

3 3.2

Surface Forms

hoisin sauce singular

hoisin sauces plural

Morphology

hoisin + sauce

The noun-noun compound is fully compositional: 'hoisin' names a specific sweet, thick condiment and 'sauce' indicates a condiment, so the meaning is directly derivable as the sauce made from hoisin. The pattern 'X + sauce' is a transparent, cross-linguistically common way to name types of sauces, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand it.

Etymology

Hoisin sauce may come from the Cantonese word hoisin meaning 'seafood' or 'oyster', because cooks often used the sauce with fish and roasted meats as a dip or a coating. That's why today hoisin sauce is a thick, sweet sauce people use to add rich, savory flavor to dishes.