Sweet Bean Sauce
“Tianmianjiang — wheat-flour-and-fermented-bean sauce. The base for Beijing zhajiangmian and the wrap sauce for moo shu.”
Where it comes from
Beijing and northern Hebei, Ming dynasty. Liubiju, founded 1530 in Qianmen, is the reference brand and still operates from the same hutong; the recipe predates Qing court patronage and was supplied to imperial kitchens by 1750.
On the plate
Cocoa-brown, paste-thick, almost candy-glossy in the jar. Sweet up front (it really is sweet — wheat starch broken down to malt sugar), light soy salt, faint mushroom funk. No heat, no sourness. Spread thin on a scallion + duck wrap.
How it works
Wheat flour steamed into bricks, inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae for koji, then salt-brined and sun-aged 30–90 days. Amylase in the koji breaks wheat starch into maltose — that's the sweetness, not added sugar. Hoisin's wheat half is built on this same paste.
Liubiju's eight-leaf labeled jar is hand-aged in open courtyards; the supermarket Liubiju in plastic tubs is industrial. The price difference is roughly 10× — and the difference shows in zhajiangmian, where industrial paste flattens to one-note salt.
Variations
Liubiju (Beijing, hand-aged, standard); Tianjin guifaxiang (saltier, used in goubuli baozi filling); Shanxi-style (drier, often blended with sesame paste for mantou dipping).
On the Palate
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
4 steps · Show ↓10 min active · 40 min waiting
How it's made
4 steps · Show ↓- 15 min
Mix 1 kg fermented wheat-soybean paste + 200 g sugar + 100 ml soy sauce.
- 210 min
Heat in heavy pot stirring constantly to dissolve sugar.
- 330 min
Simmer 30 min to thicken to spreadable jam consistency.
- 45 min
Cool; jar; use for moo shu pancakes or zhajiangmian sauce base.
