Shacha sauce

What shacha is

Shacha (shachajiang, 沙茶醬, also written sha cha or sacha) is a savoury, oil-rich condiment of garlic, shallot, chilli and dried seafood, most often brill and dried shrimp. The characters mean sand tea sauce, and the origin of the name is unclear. English-language jars call it Chinese barbecue sauce, but it has nothing to do with a sweet tomato barbecue sauce; it is oily, aromatic and seafood-rich, with a coarse, granular texture. It is used in Fujian, Teochew (Chaozhou) and Taiwanese cooking, in soups, marinades and rubs, stir-fries and dipping sauces.

Products differ, so the name does not fix a formula. A Bull Head label transcribed by a retailer lists dried fish, shrimp, sesame and coconut among its ingredients. The retailer names the fish as lizardfish, while the Woks of Life glossary gives brill; the two descriptions do not establish that the same fish is used. The manufacturer's own page says its product is made with dried fish and a second ingredient, with garlic, galangal and aromatics, cooked by roasting and frying to a granular texture. It declares soy, fish, nuts, crustaceans and sesame.

A home method

The method above is a Taiwanese hotel chef's home version. It is a dry stir-fry: garlic fried in lard, then the dried seafood and sesame chopped fine or powdered, shallot crisps and three savoury ingredients, soy sauce, doubanjiang and fermented black beans, cooked together on low heat for about five minutes, with rice wine at the end. The chef keeps it dry and grinds it fine if the texture of a jarred sauce is wanted. The article gives amounts for the garlic, shallot crisps and sauces but not for the sesame, dried shrimp, dried fish, lard or rice wine, and no yield, so those lines carry no figures here.

He says it keeps more than six months in the refrigerator if no water gets into the jar. That is the chef's claim, not a tested shelf life. The fermentation in this recipe is in the bought black beans and chilli paste. The sauce itself is cooked, not fermented.

Where it came from

The National Museum of Taiwan History entry in the National Cultural Memory Bank connects the name and the sauce to Southeast Asian satay and describes Shantou migrants adapting it after 1949. A Geographical Society of China (Taiwan) essay emphasises nineteenth-century Fujian and Guangdong migration, the Teochew changes to the ingredients and the postwar shops that made shacha dishes familiar in Taiwan. Scholarly abstracts describe the satay-to-sha-cha transmission by Chaozhou and Shantou migrants, the sauce's arrival in Kaohsiung and the sha-cha hot-pot businesses of Taipei from the 1950s to the 1980s.

These accounts overlap but their chronologies differ. They support connected regional histories, not a precise birthplace or one inventor. The exact date and the order of the satay-to-shacha adaptation remain disputed.

How it is eaten

The Geographical Society essay describes Teochew shacha beef noodles, stir-fried beef, rice cakes, beef balls and hot pot in which the sauce goes into the broth. It contrasts this with Taiwan's clear hot-pot broth, where shacha is served as a dip. A hot-pot dip from the Woks of Life combines prepared shacha with sesame paste, soy sauce, chilli oil and fresh aromatics; that is a meal accompaniment built on a bought sauce, not a way to make shacha. XO sauce is named as the closest substitute, though it costs more because of its dried shrimp and scallops.