The Savory Sauce That Pork Dumplings Are Often Served With

When browsing the internet's many dumpling dipping sauce recipes, you'll start to notice a pattern. Though exact measurements, ingredients, and instructions may vary, it can be gathered that a good pork dumpling sauce is made from the perfect balance found when sweet, sour, spicy, and salty elements come together. With those base flavors in place, you're free to experiment with extra ingredients to your liking. Pork is one of the most common filling in traditional Chinese dumplings. It's affordable and widely-available; it also absorbs flavor well and loves a little added moisture. This makes pork incredibly adaptable and sauce-friendly, and the perfect canvas for that quadfecta of salty, sweet, spicy, and sour.

Start the sauce with a basic foundation, like you'll find in the three-ingredient dipping sauce we like pairing with the soup dumplings from Trader Joe's. Soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili oil come together in a simple 3:1:1 ratio. If you have the time, use caramelized fish sauce as a way to add sweetness to your sauce as well as rich, salty, umami flavor. You can make a caramelized fish sauce by combining equal parts water, fish sauce, and sugar until the water evaporates and the mixture thickens a bit. For the spicy element, a good chili crisp does wonders for flavor and texture. The salty addition to a traditional pork dumpling sauce is most often soy sauce, but you could use a bright and tangy ponzu sauce to add depth. Finish everything off with a drizzle of sesame oil for a nutty layer, and you can add fresh herbs, green onions, ginger, garlic, or other accoutrements from there.

While most cultural cuisines across the globe feature some version of a dumpling, filled Chinese dumplings are believed to have been around for more than 1,800 years, and were invented by a man named Zhang Zhongjian. The story goes that he encountered a village in the throes of a particularly harsh winter and crafted warm, soft, filled dumplings as a way to nourish the people living there. They may have originally been filled with mutton, but pork has long been a staple ingredient; one that pairs particularly well with the sweet and sour combo of the perfect dipping sauce.

Whether you're at home making pork dumplings with tips from James Beard Award-winning author Kristina Cho or shopping for the best dumplings in the frozen section, a delicious dipping sauce is an absolute must. Most variations of a traditional dumpling sauce will pair nicely with all kinds of dumplings, thanks to that perfectly balanced blend of sweet, salty, sour, and spicy. If you can't be bothered to make your own sauce, don't sweat it. There are lots of store-bought options on the market, like Weichuan Dumpling Sauce, that can easily substitute a homemade version.