This dish is delicious! A note for first-time makers: when making the cornstarch & water mixture to thicken the sauce don't add the cornstarch to HOT water or you will end up with a dish full of glue. Add it to cold water and then stir in to thicken the sauce. This may be common knowledge for some but it wasn't for me!
Just to say that in Chineese cooking there are two types of soy sauce "light and dark". Both are used to add salt to a dish but the dark soy also adds colour. There is no need to add extra salt to a chineese dish if you use soy sauce. You are just doubling your salt intake. You can also get low sodium soy sauce to reduce your salt intake even more.
This recipe turned out waaaaaaaaaaay too salty. I had to use Black Bean with Garlic sauce b/c our store did not carry regular Black Bean sauce. Maybe this was the problem - but 6 tablespoons of that stuff was ALOT. I didn't look at the sodium content before hand and I regretted it - This was almost too salty to be edible.
I have had this dish in many restaurants and this recipe ranks high on the list! It was very yummy!! I ran into a problem when adding the cornstarch mixture at the end. I added the whole thing at once and my sauce turned into a blobby mush. I just added some water to thin it back out and it tasted really good. So next time I make it I don t think I will add the cornstarch or just a little because the sauce looked perfect before I added it. I will definitely be making this again and passing on the recipe!
After reading the reviews. I left out the salt and subbed the bouillon cube for broth. My only other change is that I added shrooms but only because we love them. Very tasty but too salty as written so I am glad I read the reviews and made my changes beforehand.
Okay the secret to toning down the saltiness of this dish is to omit the salt chicken bouillon and the soy sauce. Then increase the water to 1 cup. Use 1 1/2 Tablespoons (4 1/2 teaspoons) cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup additional water to thicken. Also stir in 1 teaspoon sugar. Without so much salt this is delicious.
I followed the recipe exactly , Black bean sauce is salty and then adding salt and salty chicken bouillon made it inedible. I also found the sauce slimy. Luckily I made fried rice and had spring rolls.
This tastes just like the one I had in England! So YUMMY! I didn't add the salt. I added water chestnuts pea pods and zucchini. I added most of the corn starch mix but I did it a little at a time. I will be making this again VERY soon!
Fabulous recipe. Served it at an ethnic dinner club and received several thumbs up. Few small adjustments; substituted 1-2 Tbsp HOT black bean sauce for some regular for more spice used chicken broth vs. bouillon. I found the bean sauce salty so cut out the salt and used light (vs. dark) soy sauce. Not sure exactly where to find or what to do for 'toasted' seasame oil so used regular seasame oil heated in toaster oven. I'm always nervous to make a recipe for the 1st time for a big groug but it worked great & pretty easy to prepare.
