Dimsimlim shares his must-have Asian ingredients - Ingredient Guide

Nov 06, 2025

Stock up on these five pantry heroes and you'll never need to order takeaway again.

Southeast Asian cuisine is loved the world over for its tantalisingly umami-rich and complex flavours and fresh, vibrant ingredients. What makes it even more popular is that it’s easy to recreate your favourite Southeast Asian dishes in your own kitchen – all you need is a handful of the right ingredients at your fingertips.

Chef and content creator Vincent Yeow Lim, AKA Dimsimlim, has garnered millions of social media followers by sharing his cooking tips and recipes that help people create authentic Southeast Asian dishes at home. He recently took delicious. shopping to show us his top five must-have Asian ingredients that he always keeps on hand in his kitchen at home.

This kung pao chicken recipe uses all five key ingredients listed here.

Oyster sauce

‘You’ll always find a bottle of oyster sauce in my fridge,” says Lim. And once you’ve tried cooking with it, you’ll likely always have one in your fridge, too.

While traditional oyster sauce is made by simmering oysters in water until the whole concoction is a thick, caramelised reduction, commercial oyster sauces are usually made from oyster extract, as well as other ingredients like sugar, salt, soy sauce and cornflour. The story goes that the first oyster sauce was created by accident – back in the 1880s, a Chinese food-stall operator named Lee Kum Sheung left a pot of oyster soup on the stove for too long. After tasting the thick gravy-like substance that was left, he realised he had created something marvellous. This was the beginning of the now world-famous Lee Kum Kee Asian condiment empire.

You can use oyster sauce in stir-fries, in marinades, as a dipping sauce… anywhere some extra umami oomph is needed. Just remember that a little goes a long way. Try a dollop in your next bolognese.

Dim sim — Give your dim sims a little extra oomph with a splash of sesame oil.

Sesame oil

“This will flavour everything and make it super-fragrant,” Lim says. As the name suggests, this is an oil that’s been extracted from sesame seeds. The flavour is stronger and nuttier than regular cooking oils; our Food Director recommends adding a drizzle towards the end of cooking to add extra depth of flavour to dishes of all descriptions. Add a little and taste, then add more if you think it needs it. You can also use sesame oil in dumpling fillings for added flavour. Be sure to store your opened sesame oil in the fridge, as otherwise it will turn rancid unless used quickly.

Mongolian beef — A splash of shaohsing is just the thing!

Chinese cooking wine

“I can’t live without this one, because this makes everything super-fragrant, super-Asian,” Lim says.

This fermented rice wine – most commonly shaohsing – is a key ingredient in many Chinese dishes. It’s used to add acidity and to create a nice balance of flavours in dishes like stir-fries. It can also be used in marinades and master stocks, to flavour sauces and dumpling fillings, to deglaze a pan or wok and to tenderise meats. Just note that this is not wine meant for drinking!

Chicken powder

“You can use chicken powder for anything like soups, sauce bases, marinades, seasonings,” Lim says.

Chicken powder is a seasoning blend made from dehydrated chicken meat, salt, sugar, and other flavour enhancers. You can find both Asian and Westernised versions of this; the Asian chicken powder is more concentrated and umami-rich than regular chicken stock powder.

Fried rice — Forget what you’ve heard – a little MSG is a good thing.

YumYum Umami Seasoning

YumYum is a blend of wok-roasted salt, white pepper and MSG. And it’s yum-yum.

“A little bit of YumYum – you can use this for absolutely anything,” Lim says. “Stir-fries, fried rice, pastas, steaks, chips. This is it.”

Don’t let the MSG scare you – monosodium glutamate is a flavour enhancer that earned a bad reputation back in the 1960s, when an American doctor wrote to a medical journal claiming he got sick after consuming Chinese food. But many other foods contain MSG. It occurs naturally in foods like tomatoes and cheese, and is also added to everything from canned soups and instant noodles to McDonald’s sauces and potato chips. It doesn’t make you sick (unless you have a sensitivity to glutamates), but it does make things taste amazing. You can find out more on the truth about MSG here.

Vincent Yeow Lim’s new cookbook, The Wolf of Wok Street, is on sale now. $45, Hardie Grant Books.