There is a lady at work that makes the most awesome and most delicious Chicken Fried Rice on the planet. She uses white rice with some sort of brown sauce that is added when frying the rice in the wok. She won't tell anyone what that brown sauce is other than she is using soy sauce. Not true! It is extremely mild, and slightly brown in color. Does anyone have any idea?
Sauce – the brown sauce in authentic Chinese fried rice
asian-cuisinesauce
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Hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, and black bean paste seem to be the most likely culprits. What is the texture of the sauce? If it's smooth, it's hoisin; but hoisin tends to be salty. If it's not smooth, it's black bean paste. Oyster sauce is a little oilier than the other two, and is used in almost every Asian sautee.
Absolutely you can! It's a popular choice with Chinese and Indian flavor profiles. You can just treat it exactly like you would any other leftover rice. It's a lovely ingredient to work with. The nutty Basmati flavor works beautifully however you choose to season fried rice.
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Best Answer
If it really is authentic, then it is soy sauce. Some recipes also use oyster sauce but I would not call that authentic or traditional.
Soy sauce can mean many things; it might just be a different soy sauce from what you're used to. There are light vs. dark soy sauces, and also fermented vs. hydrolyzed kinds. A naturally fermented light soy sauce would probably be (a) mild and (b) slightly brown.
Some other common types of sauce that I've seen used in stir fries are hoisin and satay. But, as with oyster sauce, I wouldn't call those authentic or traditional. That "some sort of brown sauce" is almost certainly soy sauce. It might include XO sauce, although you would notice a seafoody taste in that case.