Nearly Lee Kum Kee — Homemade Black Bean Sauce

There is a jar of Lee Kum Kee black bean sauce that has sat at the back of British Chinese kitchen cupboards for about thirty years. You probably recognise it. Dark label, red lid, beans suspended in a thick, intensely savoury sauce — the black bean sauce recipe that defined a generation of British Chinese takeaway cooking.

Back in Cumbria before 2012, I used to buy it specifically to make Chicken & Black Beans — the dish I first ate at Pearl City in Manchester's Chinatown, now closed. I would rinse the beans thoroughly to strip the preservatives, cook them down with the sauce, and get close enough to convince myself. Then the move to Andalucía, and the jar quietly disappeared from the shopping list for over a decade.

September 2026. A 250g bag of Diamond fermented salted black soybeans — douchi — arrived from an online order. The Nearly Series version was long overdue.

What Are Fermented Black Soybeans?

Fermented salted black soybeans — douchi in Chinese — are not the same as the tinned cooked black beans used in Cuban or Caribbean cooking. They are small, dark, intensely savoury soybeans that have been fermented with salt, and they are the ingredient behind black bean sauce in Chinese cooking. Lee Kum Kee uses them. So does every other Chinese black bean sauce worth knowing about.

Diamond is a widely available brand in the UK and online. The beans arrive dry, compressed, and powerfully aromatic. A single rinse before cooking is all they need — and the result is a black bean sauce recipe that tastes nothing like the powder-and-water versions and everything like the real thing.

The Nearly Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Sauce Recipe

This is a storecupboard version — garlic powder and ginger powder rather than fresh, dark soy, Shaoxing rice wine, a little brown sugar for depth and colour, cornflour to tighten it at the end. A neutral oil. One 200ml jar.

It is very close to the original. Close enough.

A note on the oil: sunflower oil is the right call here. You want something neutral that carries the aromatics without competing with the beans. Groundnut oil works equally well. Save the olive oil for something else.

Ingredients

• 100g Diamond fermented salted black soybeans, rinsed once under cold water
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp ginger powder
• 2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
• 3 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• Pinch of sea salt
• 100ml water
• 1 tsp cornflour mixed with 1 tbsp cold water
• Optional: 1 tsp Nearly Sriracha for heat

Method

1. Rinse the Diamond beans once under cold water and drain.
2. Warm the sunflower oil in a small saucepan over a low heat. Add the beans and fry gently for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the garlic powder, ginger powder, Shaoxing rice wine, dark soy sauce, brown sugar, salt and water. Stir to combine.
4. Simmer gently for 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the beans are soft and the sauce has reduced and deepened in colour.
5. Stir in the cornflour slurry and cook for a further minute until the sauce thickens to a coating consistency.
6. Add Nearly Sriracha to taste if using.
7. Spoon into a sterilised jar while hot. Seal, cool, refrigerate. Use within two weeks.

How to Use Homemade Black Bean Sauce

Stir through noodles. Spoon over steamed rice. Use it as the base for Chicken & Black Beans — the dish this whole jar was made for. It also works well as a marinade for pork or tofu, or stirred through fried rice at the end of cooking.

This black bean sauce recipe is a starting point, not a finished dish.

FOOTNOTES

It also features in my Nearly Series — homemade versions of the storecupboard condiments worth making yourself — and in my Black Bean Recipes collection.

Find more recipes and food adventures here.

Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures — The Flexible Chef