They Will Sell No Soy Before Its Time
Soy sauce is ubiquitous in Japanese cuisine. However the majority of soy sauce consumed today is mass manufactured. Less than 1% of the condiment sold in Japan is manufactured in the traditional method. Does it really matter? How different is the taste? Is this a real thing, or just something that people claim to sound knowledgeable? As experts in sounding knowledgeable, we will attempt to answer the questions.
The process of making soy sauce has a lot in common with many other Japanese foods, particularly fermented foods. Natto LINK , miso, sake, and other foods have a great deal in common in the production process, particularly miso and sake. Because the process of making these foods is a natural process, it takes time, meaning that the finished product is more expensive and harder to find.
Soy sauce is generally made from three ingredients plus water; soybeans, wheat, and salt. Modern manufacturing techniques allow the use of defatted soybeans from which the oil has been extracted. This reduces the cost of the raw material, because it uses a waste product from soybean oil production, but it also changes the flavor and reduces the complexity of the finished product.
Just like miso and sake, making traditional soy sauce involved the use of koji mold. And just like in those products, the koji (aspergillus) is employed to break down the raw material (in this case the bean mash and wheat) into simpler products, like amino acids (for the soy beans) and sugars (for the wheat). Tamari soy sauce should be made without wheat, which is beneficial for those who cannot consume gluten, but which eliminates the sweetness provided by the wheat, making the product more intensively salty. Aspergillus is quite finicky. If the temperature is too low, it won't grow. If it's too high, it dies. If there's not enough oxygen, it dies. If there is too much oxygen, or if the air is contaminated, other undesirable microorganisms can begin to grow and spoil the product. And it isn't just a matter of "set it and forget it." Aspergillus generates its own heat as it digests plant matter, as well as carbon dioxide, so the conditions must be constantly monitored and adjusted.
Once the koji has done its work, you have something called "moromi." At this point it is set for fermentation with lactic acid bacteria and yeast. The moromi is created by mixing the koji with salt water. Moromi closely resembles watery miso, because that's essentially what it is. In a mass-manufacturing environment, the temperature is controlled to bring the aging process down to 6 months. In a traditional process, the moromi is aged in giant wooden barrels for at least a year, and in some cases much longer. It is during this time that the soy sauce develops depth of flavor. If it is in a steel tank, being constantly stirred in a temperature-controlled environment, it doesn't pick up very much. In a traditional environment, it is stirred by hand and subject to the ambient temperature of the factory. In addition to time, the less controlled environment adds to the complexity of the finished product.
领英推荐
Once aging is finished, artisanal soy sauce is placed in cloth bags and slowly squeezed, just like sake. For mass-manufactured soy sauce, the moromi is squeezed by mechanical presses under heat and pressure. This speeds up the process, but introduces off flavors while also "flattening" the flavor. Using the traditional method takes 3 to 7 days.
After this, the soy sauce can be bottled raw (very rare) or it can be pasteurized or microfiltered to remove the microorganisms and stop fermentation. It is then bottled, labelled, and shipped. Looking on Amazon, artisanal soy sauce sells for between 20 and 40 US dollars a bottle. Mass manufactured soy sauce runs between 3 and 10 dollars a bottle. Is it worth the premium price? Well, as stated above, less than 1% of Japanese soy sauce is artisanal. Chances are strong that most Japanese people have never tasted the artisanal stuff. And mass-manufactured soy is fine and does not stand out, other than providing a hit of salt and umami. But if you can, give the expensive stuff a try!
Links to Artisanal Soy Sauce Makers: