#24 - Make XO Sauce

I'd seen a video on Serious Eats about this sauce and made it a goal to make some to flavor-up plain meals. It has so many ingredients (15) and so many steps (7) and takes so much time (3 hours, 1 hour of which is actively working). Most of the ingredients I do not keep around regularly (e.g., dried scallops, dried shrimp, Jinhua ham, oyster sauce), so it was a pricy undertaking.

All of it was worth it. 

Damn is this an amazing condiment.

I tried it with poached fish, with rice and a fried egg, in fried rice (the best use I've tried so far), and a few other things. 

Next time I make it, I'll likely halve the amounts because I couldn't get through that much of it by myself (and my parents are allergic to scallops, so they couldn't help), but I will definitely make it again! What a fun way to add SO much flavor to some basic, economic meals!