About the hoisin (hoisin sauce)
As a very big, popular and international omnilogy website, we mentioned already the
hoisin (
hoisin sauce) in the
easy chicken salad topic and in the
world's most delicious foods topic. And now I want to make it more clear (detailed) what is the
hoisin sauce.
The name of the sauce
It's important to know that in fact "hoisin" is just the Cantonese for the Chinese (Mandarin) haisian (haixian; in pinyin: hǎixiān, in hanzi/Chinese characters: 海鲜). Originally I knew it as "海鲜酱" (it's in simplified Chinese. In traditional Chinese it's "海鮮醬"). Then I wondered what's that "hoisin" and I guessed right, that it's just the commonly used in Chinese cuisine "haixian jiang" (in pinyin: "hǎixiānjiàng").
What kind of sauce is hoisin (haixian; haisian)
And now some more detailed information about what kind of sauce is it. It's a thick, fragrant sauce commonly used in Chinese cuisine as a glaze for meat, an addition to stir fries, or as dipping sauce. It is darkly colored in appearance and sweet and salty in taste. Although regional variants exist, hoisin sauce usually includes soy beans, fennel seeds, red chillies, and garlic. Vinegar, Chinese five spice and sugar are also commonly added. The word hoisin (海鮮, Cantonese: hoi2 sin1; Mandarin: hǎixiān) is Chinese for seafood, but the sauce does not contain any seafood ingredients.
About the ingredients: Peking-style hoisin sauce ingredients include starches such as sweet potato, wheat or rice, and water, sugar, soybeans, sesame seeds, white distilled vinegar, salt, garlic, red chili peppers, and sometimes preservatives or coloring agents. Traditionally, hoisin sauce is made using toasted mashed soy beans. Despite the literal meaning, hoisin sauce does not contain seafood, nor is it typically used with it.
Source and more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoisin_sauce (Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License).