Stir-fry Plum Sauce recipe

I like a stir-fry. But I’m often a bit iffy about the ready-made stir-fry sauces you can buy in the supermarkets – some of them have got all sorts of rubbish in them. With a bottle of Artisan Damson & Sloe Vinegar a delicious, healthy, home-made stir-fry Plum Sauce is extremely easy to make with this simple plum sauce recipe.

Plum flavours go very well with oriental style cooking. The damson is a small, dark purple, sour plum. The sloe is even smaller and even sourer. We don’t sweeten our Artisan Damson & Sloe Vinegar at all. It is sour, acid, and bursting with plummy flavour.

I start with a touch of vegetable oil – just enough to soften the few solid ingredients. A little onion, finely sliced; garlic to taste; I like a fresh chilli, but some chilli flakes or powder, or none at all will do; a little bit of fresh ginger; and I like to put in a teaspoon of Five Spice powder. You might think you don’t need to bother with those ingredients if you’ve already got them going on in your stir-fry – and you might be right. But I like to cook some in the sauce as well.

Fry those gently to soften. Then add Artisan Damson & Sloe Vinegar. For 2 people I use about 100ml. You can use a whole bottle if you like, and either use the lot or put any extra in the freezer ready for a super-quick meal another day.

Then add sugar to taste – some folks will like it sour, some will like it sweet, so just add a teaspoon at a time till it’s right for you.

Get a tsp of cornflour, dissolve that in a tiny little splash of cold water, add that to the pan and stir to thicken.

Job done.

And if you want a super-quick, super-simple Plum Sauce recipe, heat up the Artisan Damson & Sloe Vinegar, dissolve some sugar to taste, and thicken with cornflour – and that’s it.

If you keep a bottle of plum vinegar in your store cupboard you’ve always got what you need to make a quick stir-fry plum sauce. Artisan Damson & Sloe Vinegar doesn’t contain any chemicals or additives. It is made with 100% Cornish damson and sloe plums and nothing else. It is live and contains ‘the Mother’, which is widely thought to be pro-biotic and good for your digestive health. So, using it for a stir-fry sauce is a healthy alternative to the chemical mixtures you’ll find on the supermarket shelves.

Artisan Damson & Sloe Vinegar - available from our webstore https://artisanvinegar.co.uk/product/artisan-damson-sloe-vinegar-250ml/

Mark Nattrass