02.02.07
A Soy Sauce Primer
Somebody asked me, in relation to the previous post, whether “dark” soy sauce was the same as “black” soy sauce.
This is a good question, and one that I had to wrestle with quite a bit when I was first learning Chinese cooking. After all, to us round-eyed folks there are usually only two varieties of soy sauce — maybe three. Regular soy sauce, “lite” sodium-reduced soy sauce, and possibly tamari, if one has encountered it.
(In truth there’s also the really awful stuff they put in packets and hand out in the cheapest of cheap Asian restaurants, which is more or less salt water darkened with caramel color, with no soybean or wheat flavor at all.)
I note that only two of these, regular soy sauce and tamari, are types traditionally used in Asia.
Soy sauce is a bit of a universe of its own, really. Japanese and Chinese approaches to the stuff are different. Other soy-sauce-using nations, like Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia (whose kecap manis is sweetened with palm sugar, yum!) or the Phillipines, also have national preferences in their soy sauce formulations, but Japanese and Chinese are the ones I use and thus the ones I will talk about here. I’ll start with what I know about the Japanese types because they are fewer in number and simpler to describe.
Soy sauce originated (so I read) in China, but the leading brands sold in North America are Japanese, with Kikkoman brewing sauce on American soil (quite heavy on the wheat, the American made Kikkoman, by the by). There are three basic types of Japanese soy sauces, and they differ based on the ratio of their ingredients, which are soybeans, roasted wheat, and salt. The soybeans and wheat are then fermented using an Aspergillus mold of which there are a couple of types, although loosely speaking they are all referred to in Japanese as koji.
Tamari is technically 100% soybeans, with no wheat. Or at least it should be, although I have seen several brands that contained wheat; it will in any event have the highest soybean-to-wheat ratio of all soy sauces. Originally this was the liquid produced as a byproduct of miso fermentation. It is very dark, very savory, and thicker and more opaque than what most people think of when they think of soy sauce. It has a very intense taste and is usually used in braising, stews, and other long-cooking dishes with other intense flavors. (It also rocks on popcorn if you use a spray bottle, just noting.)
Dark soy sauce (shoyu, koikuchi) is the “normal” Japanese soy sauce. It has a vibrant reddish-brown color and nutty and meaty notes along with the saltiness.
Light soy sauce (usukuchi) has a higher ratio of wheat to soy sauce, a paler more caramel color, and a significantly different taste. The salt presents itself more straightforwardly, so it may sometimes seem saltier on the tongue at first. But it also has a certain amount of sweetness from the wheat. This is apparently popular in some of the northern provinces in Japan. Also, some usukuchi types have amazake, sweet rice wine, added to them.
There are also apparently two other Japanese types, shiro shoyu or “white” soy sauce, and saishikomi or “twice brewed” soy sauce, but I have never seen or used either one. Shiro is supposed to be almost clear in color, composed primarily of wheat and salt, and employed in dishes where a brown or reddish color isn’t desired. Saishikomi uses koikuchi (regular soy sauce) instead of brine in the process of making new soy sauce, and is supposed to be very strongly flavored indeed, as a result.
Those are the basics. Most of the soy sauce sold in the USA is plain old koikuchi of one sort or another — some of it with reduced salt, the American “lite” soy sauce, but the same basic soybean-to-wheat ratios. Don’t let “lite” and “light” confuse you! If the color is the same as regular soy sauce, it’s just “lite,” with less salt; if the color is different, it’s actual light soy sauce, which has just as much salt if not more.
Now on to Chinese soy sauces. The Chinese prefer a robust soy sauce with plenty of soybeans involved. 醬油 is the Chinese generic term for what we call “soy sauce” if you are looking for it on bottles, by the way. Pronunciation will vary by dialect, but Mandarin is roughly “jiang you” and Cantonese, “see yau.”
Regular soy sauce, in China, is “sheng chow,” 生抽, (or jiangyou in Taiwan) characterized as “fresh” or “light.” It is roughly analogous to the Japanese koikuchi although typically more opaque.
Dark or “old” soy sauce is “lao chow,” 老抽, which is aged. In addition to the usual soybeans, wheat, and salt, it also contains molasses, which gives it a thicker (and sometimes viscous) texture and a distinctive taste. The sweet note of the molasses is very useful in certain recipes, but is a really good reason that it cannot be substituted for regular soy sauce, as well as an excellent reason that you wouldn’t want to substitute Japanese “dark” soy sauce for Chinese ones.
Thick soy sauce (醬油膏) is a whole different ball game. It comes in jars, not bottles, because it is too viscous to pour easily. It is not really a soy sauce type but instead a separate preparation that is made of regular soy sauce thickened with molasses and some sort of starch. Occasionally they also contain MSG, so read labels carefully if you want to avoid that. Thick soy sauce is used in dipping sauces and such where its texture is useful, I also have several recipes that call for it in sauces that will be used on cold noodles, where again the thicker texture helps the sauce cling to the food.
Flavored soy sauces: Chinese also use a variety of flavored soy sauces, of which the most popular is mushroom flavored, made with lots and lots of black mushroom and imparting a dense shiitake-fungal kick (brilliant, by the way, in the filling for stuffed eggplant). It is somewhat thicker than regular Chinese soy sauce and also contains some sugar that seems to potentiate the mushroom flavors.
The Japanese also use flavored soy sauces, of which the one I have seen and eaten most frequently is flavored with ponzu, a citrus sauce, used often with tataki and nabemono dishes.
And now you know everything I know about soy sauce!