Asian Style Barbecue Dip

[Athenagdlyt]

We Asians love a common dip for grilled food. It's a thin sauce that usually includes the following ingredients:

soy sauce
lime or green lemon juice
minced ginger
red chili pepper
raw red onions
vinegar

You will often find this sauce when Asians, particularly Filipinos are gathered for barbecue parties. Have you tried this particular sauce? If not, then you should. Kindly share your verdict here.

 

[BarbiQ]

Yes, we've used a sauce similar to this for ages. I love it. It's good on any kind of meat or vegetables. Sometimes we add some wasabi to give it more of a "bite".

What ratio of soy to vinegar do you use?

 

[Athenagdlyt]

The ratio is usually 2:1 some do it 1:1 The soy is often more than the vinegar. Some don't use vinegar anymore, just the lime, in our case it's Philippine lemon which is very sour. It is also great on fish. It's our version of the poor man's sauce because it's the universal dip in all households.

 

[Ellyn]

What I really like is Japanese barbecue sauce, but I don't know the ratios for these ingredients either!

- soy sauce
- sake
- mirin (which is like sake vinegar, Japanese wine vinegar)
- sugar

The sugar gives it the caramelized texture. Usually all of these are boiled together until it caramalizes. It's great over tonkatsu, and Yabu restaurant (which is famous for its katsu and is franchising all over the world, I highly recommend it) even adds crushed black sesame seeds. Apparently adding more sugar, and I don't know about leaving off the sake and mirin but probably, makes a great sauce for dango, which is sweet sticky rice balls barbecue. The saltiness of the soy sauce adds a nice contrast to the sweetness of the caramel in the sauce and the sweetness of the dango.


As for Filipino barbecue sauce, I'm more of a fan of Mang Tomas' sarsa, which is breadcrumbs-based and I forget all the other ingredients that make it taste like more than breadcrumbs and oil. It sort of reminds me of salsa mongha, which is a traditional Spanish or maybe Italian sauce, usually eaten by monastery residents hence its name, that is breadcrumbs-and-olive-oil based--and whatever leftover olives or garlic there is, a bay leaf maybe, what with the frugal life of monks. Usually this is used as a pasta sauce or a bread spread (yikes, that's carbs on carbs on carbs!) but if those on the grill like to get creative...