This homemade duck sauce recipe is fresh, preservative-free, and you can customize it to your own tastes. Best of all, it’s made with real ingredients, no high fructose corn syrup, and much more flavor than those little packets!
Chinese duck sauce, hot mustard, a bowl of crispy fried noodles, and a pot of hot tea were always served when guests were seated at the Chinese restaurants I worked at in the 80s, and I worked in many of them. For takeout/takeaway orders, we threw a few packets into the bag.
We have shown you how to cook many of your favorite Chinese restaurant dishes. But what about making your own condiments? In this recipe, we’ll show you exactly how to make duck sauce at home.
What is Duck Sauce?
Duck sauce is a condiment popular in Chinese-American takeout restaurants, often served with fried items such as egg rolls, crab rangoon, or wonton strips/fried noodles. It’s usually a thin, jelly-like consistency, orange in color, and has a sweet and sour flavor that contrasts with those savory fried flavors.
There are different variations of duck sauce served in restaurants and sold in jars at grocery stores. Some common ingredients include plums, apricots, peaches, sugar, vinegar, and salt.
But if you ever look closely at the ingredients on a duck sauce packet, you’ll see why you’d want to make your own! Lots of high fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring, and preservatives.
Why Is It Called Duck Sauce?
There are different stories about the name “duck sauce.”
Some say that the sauce was served with deep fried pressed duck, also known as wor shu opp in Cantonese.
The name may also have been derived from a traditional Chinese sour plum duck dish (one of my all-time favorite childhood dishes), as it also has a sour plum flavor.
Whatever the origin, the name stuck, and it became the go-to sauce to serve with fried food.
Is It the Same as Plum Sauce?
Chinese restaurants buy ready-made duck sauce in 5 gallon buckets. I remember the familiar red letters and logo on the buckets of Wah Yoan Duck Sauce in all the Chinese restaurants I worked in. They had a lock on the duck sauce market!
Wah Yoan doesn’t have a direct-to-consumer product or brand that I know of, but plum sauce brands like Koon Chun make a product that’s quite similar.
That said, I think it’s best to make your own duck sauce at home!
What Do People Eat with Duck Sauce?
Duck sauce is served on the side with fried and barbecued dishes like:
- Chinese Takeout Egg Rolls
- Cream Cheese Wontons
- Shrimp Toast
- Fried Chicken Wings
- Chinese BBQ Spareribs
But I have seen people put dollops of duck sauce and hot mustard onto their pork fried rice and even on their shrimp with lobster sauce!
Try this duck sauce recipe, and you’ll never look at those plastic packets the same way again!
Duck Sauce: Recipe Instructions
In a small bowl, mix the sugar and hot water until the sugar is dissolved. Add the apricot preserves.
Remove pit from the pickled plum and add to the bowl. The plum is very soft and should fall apart. Then add ½ teaspoon liquid from the pickled plum jar, soy sauce and rice vinegar.
Mix everything together with a fork until the duck sauce is well-combined. Let the sauce sit for 5 minutes and mix again.
This salted pickled plum is a secret key ingredient that most recipes you see on the internet miss! It makes a huge difference in taste and and gives our duck sauce recipe its authentic flavor.
Feel free to adjust this duck sauce recipe to your own tastes.
Add more sugar or apricot preserves if you like the sauce sweeter. Add more rice vinegar if you like your sauce slightly tart. Thin it out further with a little bit of hot water if you’d like a thinner consistency!
How to Make Duck Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 ½ tablespoons hot water
- 3 tablespoons apricot preserves
- 1 salted pickled plum
- ½ teaspoon liquid from salted pickled plum jar
- 1/8 teaspoon soy sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon rice vinegar
Instructions
- In a small bowl, mix the sugar and hot water until the sugar is dissolved. Add the apricot preserves.
- Remove pit from the pickled plum and add to the bowl. The plum is very soft and should fall apart. Then add ½ teaspoon liquid from the pickled plum jar, soy sauce and rice vinegar.
- Mix everything together with a fork until the duck sauce is well-combined. Let the sauce sit for 5 minutes and mix again.
Tips & Notes:
nutrition facts
Hi! I was wondering is there a difference between pickled plum and plum in brine?
Hi Rick, It depends on which brand you are referring to, but I think they should be very similar if not the same. The pickled plum is quite salty and I think the plum n brin may be the same.
Hello there! Thank you for the duck sauce recipe. I use to go to a Chinese restaurant that served fried little breaded pieces of chicken then it had a peanut butter sesame sauce that went over it. Do you know how to make that recipe? With Covid there’s no Chinese restaurants open. I’m so hungry for this dish! It was wonderful! Thank you! Kathy
Hi Kathy, I’m not familiar with that dish, but you can try using the same sauce as the cold noodles with sesame sauce to create your own ;-)
I don’t have a Chinese grocery convenient to me, but I do have Japanese and Korean groceries. Are there products similar to the salted pickled plum in either of those cuisines – umeboshi, maybe?
Hi Randy, yes, umeboshi is practically the same as Chinese salted plums except that the Japanese have more variations and are higher quality, since umeboshi is made for eating with rice rather than used for cooking.
Thank you for ending a lengthy search for making duck sauce! So simple, quick and easy to prepare and absolutely delicious. Thank you also for posting pictures of the jars. Made shopping at my local ‘oriental market’ much easier.
You’re welcome Brenda – hope you enjoy your homemade duck sauce!
Can you substitute Koon Chun plum sauce for the pickled plum?
Hi Christine, the Pickled plum (Koon Chun also) is salty, but the plum sauce is very sweet so that’s not going to work. If you have a Japanese market nearby, you can try to shop for umeboshi which is also a salted plum.
Oh I seriously can not wait for the crispy fried noodle recipe! Very exciting! I will check out that link thank you!
Ok now question. How do we make the crispy fried noodles to dip in the sauce? Love your family site and thank you so much for sharing these recipes with us. I’m planning the perfect Chinese food Christmas and want to make it complete. I’m thinking the fresh crispy noodles are just eggroll wrappers that are deep fried?
Hi D’anna, we have a post coming up for making crispy fried noodles, but in the meantime, check out our old school American chicken chow mein with Fried Noodle recipe ;-)
What an interesting ingredient! I’ll be trying your Pickled Plum Duck at some point too, since I now have a jar of pickled plums. I also wanted to pick up the Koon Chun Plum Sauce to try it but my local Chinese supermarket was out of that one.
I made this a few hours ago and it already tastes more complex now than it did earlier. I imagine by tomorrow it will taste even better! Really nice sauce, this is a new one to me. I’m used to supermarket ‘plum sauces’ that are cloyingly sweet without any fruit in there and very little flavour. This sauce is a revelation.
Hi Viva, thanks for your constructive comments – you are right that the pickled/salted plum is definitely a big difference from the store-bought.
I grew up in the Boston area and remember the “duck” sauce served in nearly all restaurants was an apple sauce-based mixture (I remember seeing large containers of apple sauce in the kitchens that they made their duck sauce with.) I live in Atlanta now and the recipes are night and day from the northeast. Including duck sauce. Do you have any experience/knowledge of the apple sauce based recipe? I’ve tried and tried (mixtures of plum sauce, apricot, soy sauce, etc). I just can’t get it right. Any help?
Hi Pete, I have never tried the duck sauce you are referring to that uses apple sauce as a base, so sorry to say, I won’t be of any help. It is interesting how duck sauce varies across different regions.
I remember the same thing! I am going to try the apple sauce side to see if I can get it.
I can’t find pickled plum. Can I substitute it or omit it?
Hi Kim, the pickled plum is pretty essential for an authentic taste, You can try using Japanese umeboshi, but if you don’t have that, plum or apricot jam and salt would be a reasonable substitute.