Cantonese-Style Sweet Soy Sauce For Clay Pot Rice (煲仔飯醬油)

This sauce is the secret to next-level clay pot rice. Cantonese-Style Sweet Soy Sauce—easy, umami-rich, and totally worth making from scratch!

Back when I still ate meat, clay pot rice was one of my absolute favorite Chinese dishes. Seeing and smelling the sweet soy sauce being poured from the little ceramic sauce pot onto the aromatic rice in a beige clay pot...Oof!

This delicious and easy recipe is adapted from this video of a Hong Kong YouTuber demonstrating how to make authentic clay pot rice at home, and is inspired by my desire to make an authentic and vegetarian/vegan-friendly, clay pot-inspired rice using just the rice cooker.

Key Ingredients

Find the printable recipe with measurements in the recipe card.

• Fresh Ginger, Shallot & Green Onion: The aromatics trifecta for this recipe! Some recipes call for garlic and cilantro, though I haven't tried them myself.
• Peanut Oil: You can also use sesame oil or a more neutral oil to fry up the aromatics.
• Light Soy Sauce: Light soy sauce is used mainly for flavoring, as you would with a regular soy sauce.
• Dark Soy Sauce: Dark soy sauce is used mainly for coloring, to give clay pot rice that shiny and enticing dark brown, caramelized color.
• Vegetarian Hoisin Sauce or Oyster Sauce: The YouTube chef used a regular oyster sauce, but we'll just use the vegetarian version.
• Sugar: An essential component that helps to round out the already savory flavor. You can use either white sugar or dark brown sugar.
• Shaoxing Wine: Optional if you don't or cannot consume alcohol.
• Water

Store-Bought Versions

There aren't many store-bought versions of the Cantonese-style sweet soy sauce that are specifically for clay pot rice (at least not in the Asian markets near me in San Francisco).

I have only found two, and both are from time-honored brands, Lee Kum Kee and Kikkoman. I purchased both to compare against this homemade recipe.

Lee Kum Kee's Sweet Soy Sauce is very savory (it made me 😖) with a sweet finish, and has a thicker consistency. Per its Chinese name, this one is specifically for clay pot rice.

Kikkoman's Sweet Soy Sauce for Rice is quite sweet (much sweeter than Lee Kum Kee's Sweet Soy Sauce, 😅), and has a normal soy sauce consistency.

Personally, if I had to pick a store-bought version to use for making clay pot rice with, I would pick Lee Kum Kee's Sweet Soy Sauce.

Homemade Tests Vs. Store-Bought

Using Chinese Dark & Light Soy Sauce + Shaoxing Wine: This stays truest to the recipe inspiration from YouTube and is the most similar to Lee Kum Kee's Sweet Soy Sauce, although not as thick (the homemade recipe does not use any starch thickener). When using the store-bought version, I would just suggest starting with less, as it is much, much saltier.

Using Japanese Soy Sauce + Taiwanese Rice Cooking Wine: I tried using only Japanese soy sauce (me being lazy) and Taiwanese rice cooking wine (which is probably closer to the sake used in Kikkoman's Sweet Soy Sauce for Rice).

The finished sauce was still more similar to Lee Kum Kee's Sweet Soy Sauce, but lighter and less salty, with a noticeable rice wine, sake-like aroma. The sauce was good, but because its overall salt content is lower, a lot more is needed to make the clay pot rice salty enough. And because dark soy sauce was not used, when added to rice, the rice did not have a lush, deep brown color you'd expect from clay pot rice (it was a much lighter brown).

I can see this sauce version being used as an elevated soy sauce with extra flavor or as an Asian salad dressing since it's savory yet lighter on the salt.