Lee Kum Kee - The Oyster Sauce Brand Perfect for Asian Cuisine

A food-related brand that's tied to the name for decades continues to provide the same good concoction of oyster sauce to Asian style cuisine. What's more remarkable is that the inventor of the oyster sauce category is still the best oyster sauce brand on the market.

Ian Ng

8/18/20232 min read

assorted-color spoons with spices
assorted-color spoons with spices

These days, anyone on the street recognizes the Lee Kum Kee brand of oyster sauce.

Every kitchen that lives Asian cuisine has it.Most Asian-style food staple, benefits from even a little bit of seasoning with the oyster sauce. It instantly elevates the flavour of your dish with its sweet, salty yet savoury taste. It is actually worlds apart from your usual seasoning like soy sauce.

It even is one of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Guangdong Province since 2022. That's one great achievement for any brand, a recognition of cultural heritage.

A Brand Born Out of Accident, Turned Out To Be An Essential Cooking Ingredient

Born from an accidental discovery while the founder was cooking oyster broth, the brand has since been synonymous with oyster sauce and its distinct flavor.

Used for stir-fry, marinade, dressing and much more, oyster sauce became an essential ingredient in traditional Chinese dishes, comparable to traditional soy sauce and other commonly used sauces for cooking. Tofu dishes, stir-frying meat, or as a compliment to broths, oyster sauce elevates the flavors of dishes that any home chefs are already good at.

Every occasion worth celebrating, is often made possible with Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce, just because it is also a perfect ingredient for Chinese-style fine dining.

Curating only the best oysters to create the sauce, the LKK brand ensured the sauce's quality remained consistent throughout the years.

The Unique Case of A Name That Sticks to A Category

When a name is being repeated over and over within its own category, it is hard to forget.

And Lee Kum Kee made sure that people associated its name to oyster sauce without fail.

Being heavily featured in TV commercials, radio stations and every other advertising media, no one consuming these media misses the mention of Lee Kum Kee.

Ability to Adapt to Changing Habits

As societal habits change, Lee Kum Kee has also expanded its product offerings. A variety of sauces like soy sauce, chilli sauce, gourmet sauce, even vegetarian oyster sauce, are now on the shelves of supermarkets.

To educate those who do not know how to make a simple LKK-inspired dish, they have cooking guides marked with levels of difficulty on their webpage. Such effort makes everything so much easier for the aspiring home chef.

All in all, that status of being undisputed in its own category all along, confirms Lee Kum Kee as a brand that made it.