Soy Sauces from Different Countries

We have introduced the ingredient Soy Sauce on our previous post ‘A Guide of Soy Sauce’ that tells us what is soy sauce made from, why is soy sauce used and what are the different types of soy sauce? Let’s learn more about soy sauce from China, Japan and Korea!

Chinese Soy Sauce Chinese style soy sauce is known used for the colour rather than the flavour. There are mainly two types of Chinese soy sauces: Light Soy Sauce is known to be the most common type of soy sauce. It can be normally used for cooking such as stir-dry, marinades, soups also as a dipping sauce.

Dark Soy Sauce Dark Soy Sauce is normally use to enhance the colour to the food, especially in biased dishes.

Japanese Soy Sauce Japanese style soy sauce (Shoyu) is known for its flavour rather than colour, and contain both soya and wheat, which generally makes it milder and sweeter than Chinese soy sauces. However, it is also similar to Chinese soy sauce as it divides into light and dark. There are mainly five types of Japanese soy sauces as we seen on the previous blog: This type of soy sauce is one of the main essentials soy sauces for cooking and can be used as a dipping sauce. It has a dark colour but tastes less salty as 20% of salt is taken out from the post-brewing.

Usukuchi Shoyu uses 10% more salt than Koikuchi Shoyu, it is sweeter due to mirin (sweet rice wine) is added during the brewing process. Moreover, fermented rice (kome koji), wheat gluten or amazake is also added. This soy sauce can be used to make the flavour of the food prominent without changing the colour of it.

This soy sauce has a higher soybean content, it is usually made with miso (fermented soybean paste). It is also produced with little or no wheat, which has a rich aromatic flavour and scent. This is a great for grilling and dipping especially with compliment well with food like sushi and sashimi.

Shiro Shoyu tastes more milder and sweet also looks lighter, this is because it is brewed using much more wheat. This soya sauce is great for pickle vegetables, soups and Japanese egg custard/tamagoyaki.

This sort of soy sauce is mixed with other soy sauce when being brewed, which is fermented twice and has the most umami flavour than other soy sauces. It can be also used as a dipping sauce for sashimi.

Korean Soy Sauce In Korea, there are soy sauce for soups and soy sauce for daily uses.

This soy sauce is similar to Japanese style soy sauce, however it is sweeter than the soy sauce for soup and darker in colour. It can be used for grilling, stir-frying, braising, marinating and even as a dipping sauce.

There are two types of regular soy sauce: -Jin-Gan-Jang: Mixture of chemically made soy sauce and Yan-Jo-Gan-Jang, which is great for marinating and braising. -Yan-Jo-Gan-Jang: Naturally brewed using soybeans, defatted soybeans and wheat, which is good for dipping sauce and day to day cooking. The fermentation takes between 6 months to a year. This soy sauce has a cleaner and saltier taste, it is made using Korean soy bean paste and brine. The fermentation takes a few months to 5 years. The colour is normally lighter with a tint of brown but longer the fermentation time the darker it gets.