Easy vegan stir fry sauce in the blender (no cornstarch!)

Make this super flavorful and ridiculously easy vegan stir fry sauce in your blender in minutes, no cornstarch needed.

Not counting water, this vegan stir fry sauce only uses seven simple ingredients, and it is packed with flavor. It makes a great marinade for tofu or tempeh, too!

Not counting water, this vegan stir fry sauce only uses seven simple ingredients, and it is packed with flavor. It makes a great marinade for tofu or tempeh, too!

Jump To:

• About arrowroot powder
• Recipe notes
• How to use it
• Easy vegan stir fry sauce (no cornstarch!)

About arrowroot powder

Arrowroot powder is a gluten-free, corn-free starch that comes from the root of the arrowroot plant. You can use it one-to-one in place of cornstarch, and it thickens like a dream.

Arrowroot powder is a bit more delicate than cornstarch. It works best when you add it toward the end of cooking, which is why it's important to reserve about half of the marinade for the end of this recipe.

If you're adding arrowroot to a hot pan, you want to dissolve it in water, just like you would cornstarch. In this recipe, though, we are making the sauce in the blender at room temperature, so no need to make a slurry.

Recipe notes

Hoisin sauce is the cornerstone of this stir fry sauce recipe. If you haven't had it before, it's a thick, salty-sweet mixture of fermented soybeans, garlic, ginger, sesame, chilis, and sugar.

You can see it in the photo below. It's the sauce in the measuring cup:

It gives this sauce such a lovely flavor!

I haven't run across any non-vegan hoisin sauces, so you're likely good to grab whatever jar you find for this recipe.

Instead of cornstarch, this recipe uses arrowroot to thicken it up as it cooks. You can omit the thickener, if needed. The flavor is still lovely; you just end up with a thinner sauce.

To make the stir fry sauce, just toss all of your ingredients in the blender, and puree until you have a nice, smooth mixture.

I love this sauce as-is, but you can up the garlic and ginger, if you like. I suggest starting with the sauce as written, then adding garlic and ginger, to taste, after you blend. Just blend, taste/adjust, blend, repeat until you hit the garlic and ginger levels you're after.

You can also feel free to omit the sesame oil, if you'd prefer not to use it. I really like the depth of flavor that touch of sesame adds to a stir fry sauce, but if you don't do oil, omit away!

How to use it

Use this recipe any time you need a vegan stir fry sauce.

Here are some ideas:

• in place of plain soy sauce or bottled sauce in a vegan stir fry
• in my Baked Tofu Stir Fry
• as a marinade for baked, sautéed, or air fryer tofu

In a stir fry, you want to add this sauce at two different points.

Because arrowroot is more delicate than cornstarch, I recommend using half of the sauce at the beginning of your stir fry to add flavor. Reserve the rest.

Then, during the last three to five minutes of cooking, add the remaining sauce. That will give the sauce time to thicken without allowing the arrowroot to break down.

You can make this sauce up to two days ahead of time. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Just give it a shake before using, because the solids will separate out as it sits.