Shaoxing wine is perhaps the most common ingredient on The Woks of Life that you’ve never heard of. If you’ve ever wondered why your homemade Chinese food doesn’t taste like what you’d get at a restaurant, Shaoxing wine may be the missing element!
We call for Shaoxing rice wine in many recipes, from stir-fries to dumplings and wontons. Itโs a cornerstone in our list of 10 Essential Chinese Pantry Ingredients.
But what is Shaoxing wine? Where can you buy it? What are the best substitutions for it if you can’t find it or don’t consume alcohol? Weโll cover that and more in this quick article!
What Is Shaoxing Wine?
Shaoxing wine, or shร oxฤซngjiว (็ปๅ ด้ ), is the most well-known type of Chinese cooking wine. It is a Chinese rice wine that hails from Shaoxing, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province famous for rice wine production. Itโs a key ingredient in many dishes and will create that authentic restaurant flavor you may have found difficult to replicate at home.
With early records mentioning it over 2000 years ago, Shaoxing Wine is one of the oldest forms of rice wine in China. The production process involves fermenting rice, water, and a small amount of wheat. Clear rather than cloudy, it has a dark amber color, with a mildly sweet, fragrant aroma.
Gluten-free?
Shaoxing wine does contain a small amount of wheat, so it is not gluten-free. If you are gluten-intolerant or have celiac disease, check out the substitutions section towards the end of this post!
Drinkable Shaoxing Wine?
Aged Shaoxing wine can be consumed as a beverage, usually warmed beforehand. For cooking, however, we use Shaoxing cooking wine. This bottled cooking wine has added salt to:
- Avoid an alcohol tax
- Allow it to be sold in regular grocery stores (as a cooking ingredient, not as an alcoholic beverage)
- Give it longer shelf life
Some of our readers have asked us about buying “higher quality” Shaoxing wine for cooking. We assume that this is because in Western cooking, the old adage is to only cook with wine that you would drink.
However, in the case of Chinese cooking wine, you do not need to buy an expensive drinkable Shaoxing to cook with. We do not often see artisanal or drinkable versions outside of China. There are some signs to look for in a good bottle of Shaoxing cooking wine, which we’ll cover later in the post, but a bottle shouldn’t run you more than $2-$6.
In sum, you may not want to drink Chinese cooking wine, but it still adds complexity and depth of flavor to so many dishes. We buy it by the gallon!
Shaoxing Cooking Wine vs. Other Types
There is an important distinction to be made here. Many equate Shaoxing cooking wine more generally with “Chinese cooking wine,” because it is indeed so widely used in Chinese cookingโboth in China and the diaspora. However, there are many types of Chinese cooking wine.
For instance, you may also come across clear rice wine. It’s colorless, and looks like water or vodka. By comparison, Shaoxing wine is much darker!
We use clear rice wine when we don’t want to overpower the dish with it. You may use it, for instance, to remove the fishy aroma of seafood without overpowering its delicate flavor.
Comparing the lighter flavor of rice wine vs. Shaoxing wine is like the difference between using salt or light soy sauce. One is more purely salty, while the other adds a richer flavor. We don’t use clear rice wine often, but we do have it in our pantry for occasions like that!
Other wines and liquors that you might see in Chinese cooking include Rose Wine, a rose-scented sorghum liquor (most often used in braises and roast meat marinades), and Baijiu, a very strong distilled spirit (used to cure meats and eggs, like salted duck eggs). But there are so many more!
Now that we’ve established that there is a vast array of cooking wines in Chinese cuisine, we can acknowledge that Shaoxing wine is the most famous.
It is a type of yellow wine, or huรกngjiว (้ป้ ). This is referring to the darker color, which comes from a longer fermentation process. It has a mellow, sweet, and full-bodied flavor profile, and about 14-15% alcohol content. Again, its flavor is deeper and more complex than clear rice wine.
We’ve actually visited the city of Shaoxing in China to learn more about ancient wine production! In a couple of the photos below, you can see the style of the clay jars that used to store wine.
Alternate Names & Spellings
You may see alternate English spellings of shaoxing, including “shao-hsing,” “Hsiaohsing,” or “shaoshing.” The correct Pinyin (the official romanization system for standard Chinese today; diacritics above letters indicate tone, as Chinese is a tonal language) spelling is: shร oxฤซng.
Shaoxing wine is also sometimes called hua diao wine (huฤdiฤo jiว, ่ฑ้้ ), which translates to “flower carving wine.”
Flower designs and festive colors once decorated the clay jars used to store and age the wine, and the term “hua diao” eventually became synonymous with aged Shaoxing. This alternate name can also be spelled, “hua tiao chiewโ (remnants of an old 19th Century romanization system for Chinese called Wade-Giles.)
Chia Fan wine (jiฤ fร n jiว, ๅ ้ฅญ้ ) is another name you may see on some bottles. Chia fan (also a Wade-Giles romanization) means “add rice.” This refers to a higher ratio of rice to water in the brewing process, sometimes making the alcohol content slightly higher. Hua Diao is a type of Chia Fan wine.
How to use shaoxing wine
Just like using wine in Western dishes, Shaoxing wine adds depth and flavor complexity. We’d go so far as to say that the vast majority of our savory Chinese recipes contain Shaoxing wine.
We use it in marinades for meats, as a flavor agent in wonton or dumpling fillings, to deglaze our wok and add flavor to stir-fries, and to add flavor to sauces and braises.
Shaoxing Wine is particularly essential for hong shao or red-cooked dishes like Chinese Braised Fish (Hong Shao Yu) and Shanghai Style Braised pork belly (Hong Shao Rou).
It appears in larger quantities in braised dishes, (our braised fish recipe calls for 3/4 cup!), while a marinade or stir-fry usually contains only a tablespoon or two.
It is also the star of a traditional cold appetizer aptly named, โDrunken Chicken,โ in which the chicken is cooked and then soaked in a brine of Shaoxing wine and other seasonings. This “drunken” brining method can also applied to seafood, like shrimp and crab.
Most often, however, we’re using it in smaller amountsโa tablespoon or two to deglaze the wok while stir-frying, or a teaspoon in a marinade for a few ounces of meat.
In meat dishes, you may also see a first step in which the meat is blanched with ginger and Shaoxing wine, like in our Pork Belly Stew with Sour Cabbage. The purpose of the wine there is to remove some of the gaminess of the meat to achieve a cleaner flavor.
Choosing Shaoxing Wine
If you want to cook Chinese dishes often at home, we highly suggest you get to your nearest Chinese market to buy a bottle, because youโll use it in the vast majority of the dishes you cook, and its flavor makes all the difference.
Shaoxing wine can be commonly found at any Chinese grocery store, and there are quite a few brands. Most of them come in a red bottle (one brand seems to have created the design and others followed suit).
The bottom line is: any bottle of Shaoxing cooking wine you can get your hands on will work fine in our recipes.
Generally, the only ingredients should be water, rice, wheat, and salt. Any that include “caramel color” may not be as good, though this is not a deal-breaker in our opinion.
We have the square glass bottles in our pantry, but we are generally re-filling that bottle with bulk gallon jugs of the stuff, since we use it so often. It is economical, and keeps well in the pantry. It also shows that we’re not looking for the most artisanal product here. For most uses, any utilitarian bottle that costs $2-$3โwith those basic ingredients mentioned aboveโis fine.
If you have the luxury of choice, you can buy, try, and switch if youโre not happy. You may be able to find three-year-aged Shaoxing wine at your Chinese market. These bottles are usually round rather than square, and often carry the “hua diao” label, which should indicate that it was aged in clay jars. (Though that may not always be the case.)
A general rule is, the more expensive the wine, the higher quality it is (longer aged, more flavor). Use higher quality hua diao Shaoxing wine for dishes like Drunken Chicken, where you’re using the wine in greater quantities and the subtle flavor differences in the wine are important to the dish.
As you can see, the bottle of Shaoxing wine in the photo below costs about $5 (considered expensive).
We often keep two different bottles in our pantry, one for everyday cooking (left) and one for special uses (right).
Storage
Put it in a cool, dark place (your pantry) and keep it sealed. It will keep in the pantry 6 months to a year, as long as you take care to avoid cross-contamination. If you don’t use it as often, refrigerate it to keep it even longer.
Substitutions for Shaoxing Wine
โIs there a substitute for the Shaoxing wine?โ is one of the most common questions we get on the blog.
If you don’t have a Chinese market near you, you can find it online on Amazon (albeit at double or triple the price of buying it in a store), or you may be able to find a mom-and-pop Chinese grocery that ships. For instance, Po Wing Hong, in Manhattan Chinatown, has an online store and ships non-perishable goods like Shaoxing wine!
However, if you truly canโt locate it or want a quick substitution for a one-time cooking experiment, here are our suggestions:
- Dry cooking sherry: the most common substitute we recommend, readily available in any supermarket.ย Dry sherry is also our substitution suggestion if you’d like to keep your dish gluten-free!
- Any other Chinese rice wine: This is one of those situations where you’ve run out of Shaoxing and maybe you have a bottle of clear rice wine available. It’s fine to use as long as Shaoxing isn’t one of the main ingredients in the recipe.
- Dry white wine: That’s right. Have some sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio that you’re enjoying while cooking? You can use it in a pinch if the recipe only calls for a tablespoon or two! We’ve done this while traveling/cooking at friends’ houses, and it’s a Woks-approved substitute. (In fact, we also sometimes substitute the other way around. When a recipe calls for 1/4 cup of white wine and we don’t want to open a whole bottle, we just use Shaoxing or clear rice wine! Another reason to invest in some Chinese cooking wine!)
- Japanese or Korean rice wines, such as sake or soju: a decent substitute in small amounts.
- Mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine/seasoning): We’re hesitant to suggest this one, but it can be used in a pinch. Mirin is very sweet, and in some cases, contains more sugar than wine (see if it’s labeled “mirin-style seasoning”). Just know that the dish will not taste Chinese, and you should cut out any sugar called for in the recipe, as mirin is much sweeter than Shaoxing wine.ย If there is no sugar to omit in the recipe, you will just end up with a sweeter end result.
Non-Alcoholic Substitutes for Shaoxing Wine
If you’re concerned about using alcohol in your cooking while pregnant, breastfeeding, or feeding young children, we understand! Sarah had questions about this when she was expecting, and after she had her son.
We are not scientific experts, and you should absolutely talk to your doctor about this if concerned. Generally, though, it depends on the amount of wine you use and how long you cook the dish/at what temperature. Higher heat (as in stir-fries) and longer cooking times (as in braises) will cook off more of the alcohol. Many of our dishes also only call for a tablespoon or two of wine. Divide that dish amongst the people you’re sharing it with, and you’re actually only consuming a fraction of it.
That said, if you’d still rather avoid alcohol or canโt consume it for health, religious, or personal reasons, the most common non-alcoholic substitution we recommend in a stir-fry or sauce application (in amounts equal to or less than 2 tablespoons) is chicken, mushroom, or vegetable stock.
You could also try a non-alcoholic beer or non-alcoholic white wine, though these products may contain trace amounts of alcohol.
In recipes that include Shaoxing wine in amounts less than 1 tablespoon, just use water or omit it.
Other substitutions will depend on the situation, but you can always ask us in the comments for any particular recipe!
Our Favorite Dishes That Use This Ingredient:
- Drunken Chicken
- Chinese Braised Fish
- Shanghai Style Braised Pork Belly (Red Cooked Pork)
- Dongpo Pork
- Three Cup Chicken
- Instant Pot Pork Belly
- The Only Dumpling Recipe Youโll Ever Need
- Pork Rib Stew
If you have further questions about Shaoxing wine, let us know in the comments. We try to answer every single one!
Substitutions for Shaoxing Wine
Ingredients
Shaoxing wine substitutes:
- Dry cooking sherry (ideal for a gluten-free substitute as well)
- Any Chinese rice wine (such as clear rice wine or mi chiu/mijiu)
- Dry white wine (such as sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, chardonnay, or riesling)
- Sake (Japanese rice wine, usually meant for drinking)
- Korean rice wine (cooking wine)
- Soju (a Korean distilled beverage usually made from rice, wheat, or barley)
- Mirin (reduce sugar in recipe if using mirin, as it is quite sweet)
Non-alcoholic Shaoxing wine substitutes:
- Chicken stock
- Vegetable stock
- Mushroom stock
- Pork stock
- Beef stock
- Non-alcoholic beer
- Non-alcoholic white wine
- water (if only to deglaze or add moisture)
Instructions
- Any of the above substitutes can replace Shaoxing wine in a 1:1 ratio, as long as the amounts called for in the recipe are less than 2 tablespoons. If using mirin, omit or reduce the sugar in the recipe.
- The closest substitutes above are dry cooking sherry and alternative Chinese rice wines.
