Friday, February 19, 2010

Shaoxing Rice Wine - Finally Found At H Mart

I finally sniffed out the Shaoxing rice wine at the H Mart.

I'd wanted Shaoxing because I'm cooking a storm out of Andrea Nguyen's spectacular Asian Dumplings cookbook.  Nguyen assured me that dry sherry substituted for the Chinese rice wine, but I became infatuated when I was able to find agar agar, ground pork and all the ingredients -- except for the Shaoxing.

Basically, I turned around.  I had gone bottle by bottle through the vinegars and sauces on one side of the H Mart's sauces aisle.  That's the left if you're walking from the fish section towards the front of the store.  No Shaoxing.  No Shaoxing.  No Shaoxing.

Last weekend, I turned around.  The Shaoxing was at eye level in the first section of shelf.  That took 30 seconds.

(Update:  I didn't find the right product.  A few hours after this post, Andrea Nguyen posted about Shaoxing and her favorite brand Pagoda.  I bought "cooking wine" -- which is salted and tasted terrible!  Please help me find Pagoda brand.)

Thanks to Lisa who emailed and everyone who left comments on the prior post with recommendations about where to find Shaoxing.  That confirmed for me that I had to just be overlooking it.

4 comments:

Penny said...

You are not alone--I had the same problem! Thanks for the hints everybody!

K8teebug said...

Since you could find this so easily, do you know where I can find tamarind paste? Not tamarind concentrate. I have been looking for it FOREVER.

Anonymous said...

I found tamarind paste at a local Indian market.

Anonymous said...

you can order tamarind paste online. The ones in India markets can often have undesirable ingredients. Go online!