Rice wine vinegar and mirin

[vellocet]

Rice wine vinegar is 黄酒醋, correct?  And this is different from Shaoxing wine? I always heard of Shaoxing wine referred to as rice wine in Western recipes. What's an excellent quality rice wine vinegar from Taobao?

 

I have a recipe that calls for "mirin" which I've never heard of before.  It refers to mirin also as "rice wine".  So we have rice wine, rice wine vinegar, sweet cooking rice wine, and Shaoxing wine.  All of which are not consumed as drinks but are used as cooking ingredients.  

[DavyJonesLocker]

@abcdefg is the  man for this.

[abcdefg]

MIrin is Japanese. It is sweeter than ordinary rice wine. Western recipes sometimes suggest adding a small amount of sugar to dry sherry to make something similar to mirin if it cannot be found. 

 

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Rice wine vinegar is 黄酒醋, correct? 

 

No. Rice wine vinegar is 米醋。

 

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The Marinade

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup rice wine vinegar

3 tablespoon mirin (sweet cooking rice wine)

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

 

 

In the recipe you link to above, I think the marinade would work well if you used the following easily available Chinese ingredients:

• The soy sauce should be light soy sauce, not dark soy sauce. In Chinese 生抽 or 酱油。(Not 老抽。）
• I would use 老陈醋 (aged rice vinegar) for the rice wine vinegar. (Don't use white vinegar 白醋。) Look for one from 山西。
• For the mirin I would use Chinese cooking wine, 黄酒 or 料酒。 
• Add a little extra honey to increase the sweetness of the cooking wine. Honey is 蜂蜜。
• The toasted sesame oil should be 黑芝麻油 in order to get the toasted flavor. (Not 白芝麻哟。) You may find sesame oil called 香油 in the grocery store. Just another name for the same thing.  

 

Shaoxing wine 绍兴酒 is one kind of yellow wine. It is served as a beverage as well as being used in some recipes. It is usually of a higher quality than cooking wines and is without additives.  

 

Any small or medium sized supermarket will have all these ingredients. No need to use Taobao. 

 

Hope it comes out delicious! The recipe looks like a good one. 

 

 

[abcdefg]

Also... You didn't ask about this and probably already know, but the way to get the kind of pork belly illustrated in this recipe is to ask the butcher for 带皮五花肉. (Means "with skin.") It sometimes costs a little more, but it looks a lot better and is less likely to fall apart when subjected to prolonged heat. (Keeps you from winding up with a dish that looks more like "pulled pork.")