48 Fun Facts About Soy Sauce

Which Japanese cooking style glazes grilled food with soy sauce, mirin and sugar?

Teriyaki takes its name from teri, the gloss its sweet glaze gives; outside Japan the name now covers the bottled sauce as well as the dish.

An early Japanese soy sauce began as a by-product of which fermenting food?

Miso gives off a liquid that pools in the vat as it matures; cooks who collected it had the forerunner of the soy sauces Japan brews today.

Which taste, besides saltiness, is soy sauce best known for?

Umami comes from the amino acids set free as the brewing mould's enzymes break down the proteins in the soybeans and wheat.

What do Japanese brewers call the mould-covered grain that starts soy sauce and sake?

Koji does the heavy lifting: the mould's enzymes break proteins and starches down into the amino acids and sugars that give the brew its flavour.

Usukuchi, the pale soy sauce, is used mostly in the region around which Japanese city?

Osaka and Kyoto cooks favour the pale sauce because it seasons a dish without darkening it, while Tokyo's region leans on the dark standard kind.

What is soy sauce called in Japan?

Shoyu is where English got the word soy: traders carried the name west in the 1600s, so the bean ended up named after the sauce.

Which acid do bacteria mainly produce in fermenting soy sauce mash?

Lactic acid, the same one that sours yogurt, comes from bacteria feeding on the mash's sugars, and it helps give the sauce its rich flavour.

Which trading power began exporting Japanese shoyu in 1647?

By 1737 its records list 75 large barrels shipped from Dejima to Batavia, 35 of which went on to the Netherlands.

What is soy sauce called in Korea?

Ganjang was once brewed at home by nearly every Korean household, and royal records list it among the foods prepared for a king's wedding in 683.

Before the mould goes to work, what do soy sauce brewers do to the wheat?

Roast and crush it: the roasted grain deepens the sauce's colour and aroma, while the soybeans are soaked and steamed.

Which Korean barbecue dish marinates thin-sliced beef in soy sauce, sugar, garlic and sesame oil?

Bulgogi means 'fire meat'; cooks traditionally grate a Korean pear into the marinade to flavour and tenderise the beef.

The Yamajo Soy Company was brewing Japanese-style soy sauce by 1908 in which part of the United States?

Hawaii had drawn Japanese plantation workers since 1868, and brewing their style of soy sauce soon became an established island industry.

Which brand began selling hydrolysed-protein soy sauce in the US in the early 1930s?

La Choy started out in Detroit selling canned mung bean sprouts, then widened its range to soy sauce, chow mein noodles and more.

What is done to raw soy sauce to stabilise it before bottling?

It is heated: pasteurising halts the enzymes and kills off lingering yeasts, so the flavour stops changing once the sauce is bottled.

Which chemical process gives soy sauce its dark colour and much of its aroma?

The Maillard reaction, which also browns seared steak and toast, slowly darkens the mash as sugars meet amino acids over months of ageing.

How do brewers separate soy sauce from its fermented mash?

Pressing it in cloth: the mash is folded into layered cloths and squeezed slowly for hours, and the leftover cake goes to animal feed.

Why can soy sauce mash ferment for months without rotting?

Salty brine keeps spoilage microbes out while a few salt-loving ones carry on, slowly building the flavour.

What is the main appeal of making soy sauce by acid hydrolysis, not brewing?

Speed and low cost: acid does quickly what brewing microbes need months for, though the flavour and aroma are not the same.

Which health-food product is essentially hydrolysed vegetable protein sold as a soy-sauce alternative?

Liquid aminos are pitched as a healthier swap, yet they are not necessarily low in sodium: the soy-based kind carries about as much as soy sauce itself.

Which amino acid is the most abundant in Chinese soy sauce?

Glutamic acid, the one behind MSG, is set free as the mould's enzymes break down the soy protein, and chemists long ago singled it out as the sauce's key flavouring agent.

Why can brewed soy sauce fall foul of liquor laws?

Over 1% alcohol can be left in the bottle by the yeasts that ferment the mash; in 2019 shops in Alice Springs were warned that such sauces needed a liquor licence.

Which Chinese soy sauce is the everyday seasoning one, used for flavour rather than colour?

Light (sheng chou) soy sauce at its best is the first drawing from the vat, prized and priced the way extra virgin olive oil is.

What is often added to Chinese dark soy sauce to give it its distinctive appearance?

Caramel colour or molasses deepens dark soy sauce, which cooks add in small splashes mainly to colour a dish rather than to season it.

Chinese cǎogū lǎochōu is a dark soy sauce flavoured with what?

Mushrooms, specifically straw mushrooms, give up their broth to the sauce as it finishes ageing, adding a richer flavour than plain dark soy.

Which Chinese street snack is made by cracking boiled eggs and simmering them again in soy sauce and spices?

Tea eggs get their marbled look from the cracks: the dark, tea-scented broth seeps through the shell and stains the egg beneath in a web of fine lines.

Which Filipino dish simmers meat in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic?

Adobo began as an older way of keeping meat by cooking it in vinegar; the soy sauce, called toyo in the Philippines, was a later addition.

The Indonesian word for soy sauce is a cognate of which English word?

Ketchup and Indonesia's kecap are both usually traced to a Hokkien word for a sauce of pickled seafood, which reached English by way of Malay.

What gives Indonesian kecap manis its thick, treacle-like sweetness?

Palm sugar goes in by the handful and the sauce is simmered for hours until it pours like syrup; it is by far Indonesia's favourite soy sauce.

Which Japanese hot pot simmers thin-sliced beef in soy sauce, sugar and mirin, with raw beaten egg for dipping?

Sukiyaki splits Japan in two: in the east everything simmers in a ready-mixed sauce, while in the west the beef is seared first and seasoned in the pan.

Which Japanese fast-food rice bowl is topped with beef and onion simmered in soy sauce, mirin and dashi?

Gyudon grew out of gyunabe, a Tokyo beef hot pot ladled over rice, and chains such as Yoshinoya turned it into a fast-food staple at home and abroad.

Which tart Japanese dipping sauce pairs soy sauce with citrus juice?

Ponzu strictly names the citrus-and-vinegar base alone; the dark bottled version most people know has the soy sauce already mixed in.

Shiro soy sauce is brewed mostly from wheat; what does 'shiro' mean in Japanese?

White describes its pale colour: with so little soybean it barely darkens, so chefs use it where a dark sauce would stain clear soups or pale ingredients.

Usukuchi, Japan's pale soy sauce, differs from the regular dark kind in which unexpected way?

It is saltier despite its paler colour, and it matures for less time; cooks reach for it when they do not want to darken a dish.

Japan's dark saishikomi is brewed by fermenting its mash in which liquid?

Finished soy sauce from an earlier batch is used to make the new mash, so the sauce is in effect brewed twice; the dark, rich result is mostly kept for dipping sashimi.

Southern Japan's amakuchi soy sauce differs from the standard kind by having what added?

Sweetener makes it the mainstream choice in southern Japan, above all on Kyushu, where cooks use it as their regular soy sauce rather than a speciality.

Traditional Korean hansik soy sauce is a by-product of making what?

Doenjang and the sauce come from the same crock: blocks of fermented soybeans age in brine, then the liquid becomes soy sauce and the solids the paste.

Which Korean celebration dish stir-fries glass noodles and vegetables with soy sauce and sesame oil?

Japchae literally means 'mixed vegetables', yet its star is the springy noodle made from sweet potato starch.

Which Peruvian stir-fry of beef strips, onions, tomatoes and fries is seasoned with soy sauce?

Lomo saltado grew out of chifa, the cooking of Cantonese immigrants who brought the wok to Peru, along with soy sauce, known there as sillao.

Kabayaki, grilled with a sweet soy-based glaze, is Japan's classic way of cooking what?

Eel is split, boned and skewered, then dipped in the sauce as it grills; the glaze is also bottled and sold simply as eel sauce.

Which Japanese soy sauce giant was formed in 1917 when the Mogi and Takanashi families merged their breweries?

Kikkoman kept the name of its home town, Noda, for decades, and only later took the name of its best-known brand of sauce.

Which Japanese skewers are brushed with tare, a sweet soy glaze?

Yakitori comes two ways, and diners choose with every order: plain salt, or tare, a glaze of soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar.

Which Thai dish's name means 'soy-sauce stir-fry'?

Pad see ew takes its name from si-io, the Thai word for soy sauce; a dark one goes in at the end so the wide rice noodles caramelise and pick up a smoky char.

Taiwanese soy sauce is famous for a variety brewed from which ingredient?

Black beans, strictly black soybeans, are left to ferment for months in big earthenware vats in brewing towns such as Xiluo.

Which Japanese confection comes in a 'mitarashi' version glazed with sweet soy sauce?

Dango in the mitarashi style are rice dumplings on a skewer, lightly charred and coated in the glaze; the snack is said to have begun at a tea house in Kyoto.

Before soy sauce arrived, the Japanese used gyoshō, a condiment made from what?

Fish-based sauces and soy-based ones developed separately in China too, after the Han dynasty swapped fermented fish for soy paste.

Which Indonesian national dish gets its sticky sweetness from a syrupy soy sauce?

Nasi goreng just means 'fried rice'; the sweet sauce stains the grains brown as they fry, and a fried egg usually goes on top.

Chinese cooks name the technique of braising meat in soy sauce and sugar after which colour?

Red cooking, or hong shao, is named for the glossy red-brown colour the soy sauce and sugar give the meat; red-braised pork belly is a classic of the style.

Which Japanese soy sauce contains little or no wheat, making it a favourite for gluten-free diets?

Tamari keeps to the older Chinese-style recipe that first reached Japan, brewed almost entirely from soybeans; it remains a speciality of the Nagoya region.