Soy sauce
Soy sauce is a liquid condiment of Chinese origin, traditionally made from a fermented paste of soybeans, roasted grain, brine, and Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds. It is recognized for its saltiness and pronounced umami taste.
Soy sauce was created in its current form about 2,200 years ago during the Western Han dynasty of ancient China. Since then, it has become an important ingredient in East and Southeast Asian cooking as well as a condiment worldwide.
Use and storage
Soy sauce may be added directly to food and is commonly used as a dipping sauce or used as seasoning in cooking. It is often eaten with rice, noodles, sushi, or sashimi, or mixed with ground wasabi for dipping. Bottles of soy sauce for the purpose of seasoning dishes are common on restaurant tables in many countries. Soy sauce is indefinitely shelf-stable.History
Asia
China
Soy sauce is considered almost as old as soy paste—a type of fermented paste obtained from soybeans—which had appeared during the Western Han dynasty and was listed in the bamboo slips found in the archaeological site Mawangdui. There are several precursors of soy sauce that are associated products with soy paste. The oldest is , which appeared in AD 40 and was listed in . Others are , and , which were recorded in the in AD 540. By the time of the Song dynasty, the term soy sauce had become the accepted name for the liquid condiment, documented in two books: and Pujiang Wushi Zhongkuilu during the Song dynasty.Like many salty condiments, soy sauce was originally a way to stretch salt, historically an expensive commodity. During the Zhou dynasty of ancient China, fermented fish with salt was used as a condiment in which soybeans were included during the fermentation process. By the time of the Han dynasty, this had been replaced with the recipe for soy paste and its by-product soy sauce, by using soybeans as the principal ingredient, with fermented fish-based sauces developing separately into fish sauce.
The 19th century Sinologist Samuel Wells Williams wrote that in China, the best soy sauce was "made by boiling beans soft, adding an equal quantity of wheat or barley, and leaving the mass to ferment; a portion of salt and three times as much water are afterwards put in, and the whole compound left for two or three months when the liquid is pressed and strained".
Japan
A condiment that predated soy sauce in Japan was, a fish sauce. When practitioners of Buddhism came to Japan from China in the 7th century, they introduced vegetarianism and brought many soy-based products with them, such as soy sauce, which is known as in Japan. exportation began in 1647 by the Dutch East India Company.Korea
The earliest soy sauce brewing in Korea seems to have begun in the era of the Three Kingdoms. Jangdoks used for soy sauce brewing are found in the mural paintings of Anak Tomb No. 3 from the 4th century Goguryeo.In Samguk sagi, a historical record of the Three Kingdoms era, it is written that and , along with and , were prepared for the wedding ceremony of the King Sinmun in February 683., a section from , recorded that and were included in the relief supplies in 1018, after a Khitan invasion, and in 1052, when a famine occurred. Joseon texts such as and contain the detailed procedures on how to brew good quality and. explains how to pick a date for brewing, what to forbear, and how to keep and preserve and.
Philippines
In the Philippines, soy sauce was likely first recorded through the documentation of the traditional dish adobo in 1613 via the San Buenaventura paper. Food historian Raymond Sokolov noted that the ingredients used in the dish, including soy sauce, likely were present in the native cuisine even before the colonial-era record.Europe
Records of the Dutch East India Company list soy sauce as a commodity in 1737, when seventy-five large barrels were shipped from Dejima, Japan, to Batavia on the island of Java. Thirty-five barrels from that shipment were then shipped to the Netherlands. In the 18th century, diplomat and scholar Isaac Titsingh published accounts of brewing soy sauce. Although earlier descriptions of soy sauce had been disseminated in the West, his was among the earliest to focus specifically on the brewing of the Japanese version. By the mid-19th century, Japanese soy sauce gradually disappeared from the European market, and the condiment became synonymous with the Chinese product. Europeans were unable to make soy sauce because they did not have access to Aspergillus oryzae, the fungus used in its brewing. Soy sauce made from ingredients such as portobello mushrooms were disseminated in European cookbooks during the late 18th century. A Swedish recipe for "Soija" was published in the 1770 edition of Cajsa Warg's Hjelpreda i Hushållningen för Unga Fruentimber and was flavored with allspice and mace.United States
Soy sauce production in the United States began in the Territory of Hawaii in 1905 by Yamajo Soy Co, which by 1909 was renamed the Hawaiian Soy Company Ltd. La Choy started selling hydrolyzed vegetable protein–based soy sauce in 1933.Production
Soy sauce is made either by fermentation or by hydrolysis. Some commercial sauces have both fermented and chemical sauces.Flavor, color, and aroma developments during production are attributed to non-enzymatic Maillard browning.
Variation is usually achieved as the result of different methods and durations of fermentation, different ratios of water, salt, and fermented soy, or through the addition of other ingredients.
Traditional
Traditional soy sauces are made by mixing soybeans and grain with mold cultures such as Aspergillus oryzae and other related microorganisms and yeasts. Historically, the mixture was fermented naturally in large urns and under the sun, which was believed to contribute extra flavors. Today, the mixture is placed in a temperature- and humidity-controlled incubation chamber.Traditional soy sauces take months to make:
- Soaking and cooking: The soybeans are soaked in water and boiled until cooked. Wheat is roasted and crushed.
- culturing: Equal amounts of boiled soybeans and roasted wheat are mixed to form a grain mixture. A culture of Aspergillus spore is added to the grain mixture and mixed, or the mixture is allowed to gather spores from the environment itself. The cultures include:
- * Aspergillus: a genus of fungus that is used for fermenting various ingredients. Three species are used for brewing soy sauce:
- ** A. oryzae: Strains with high proteolytic capacity are used for brewing soy sauce.
- ** A. sojae: This fungus also has a high proteolytic capacity.
- ** A. tamarii: This fungus is used for brewing, a variety of soy sauce.
- * Saccharomyces cerevisiae: the yeasts in the culture convert some of the sugars to ethanol which can undergo secondary reactions to make other flavor compounds
- * Other microbes contained in the culture:
- ** Bacillus spp. : This organism is likely to grow in soy sauce ingredients, and to generate odors and ammonia.
- ** Lactobacillus species: This organism makes a lactic acid that increases the acidity in the feed.
- Brewing: The cultured grain mixture is mixed into a specific amount of salt brine for wet fermentation or with coarse salt for dry fermentation and left to brew. Over time, the Aspergillus mold on the soy and wheat break down the grain proteins into free amino acid and protein fragments and starches into simple sugars. This amino-glycosidic reaction gives soy sauce its dark brown color. Lactic acid bacteria ferments the sugars into lactic acid and yeast makes ethanol, which through aging and secondary fermentation makes numerous flavor compounds typical of soy sauce.
- Pressing: The fully fermented grain slurry is placed into cloth-lined containers and pressed to separate the solids from the liquid soy sauce. The isolated solids are used as fertilizer or fed to animals while the liquid soy sauce is processed further.
- Pasteurization: The raw soy sauce is heated to eliminate any active yeasts and molds remaining in the soy sauce and can be filtered to remove any fine particulates.
- Storage: The soy sauce can be aged or directly bottled and sold.
High-salt liquid-state fermented soy sauce
- During HLF, -infused soybeans are exposed to air so that hydrolytic enzymes of the mold can continuously break down macronutrients within the soybean.
- Ample water, usually about 2 to 2.5 times the weight of the feed, is required to support sufficient microbial growth.
- High salt concentration is required to selectively inhibit microbial activity.
- HLF is generally carried out at, and requires a long ageing period, usually from 90 to 180 days. In the aging period, constant stirring of is required for distributing nutrients, as well as flavoring compounds evenly. In some cases, moromi is exposed to direct sunlight to facilitate the decomposition of macronutrients.
- Due to the high salinity of HLF moromi, only anaerobic halophiles can survive in the medium. Also, the temperature range allows only the growth of mesophiles. Similar to the fermentation of pickles, the primary lactic acid fermentation of sugars by halophiles reduces the pH of moromi down to acidic range. Low pH further limits the growth of undesirable microbes, but favors the growth of fermentative yeast which contributes to secondary fermentation that generates various flavoring compounds and odorants.
Low-salt solid-state fermented soy sauce
- Compared to HLF, LSF employs pure cultures at a relatively higher temperature and lower brine solution concentrations. In LSF, koji is mixed with the equivalent weight of brine to form solid moromi.
- The elevated temperature accelerates the fermentation process significantly. Due to the short aging period of LSF, and low production cost, LSF soy sauce accounts for more share of the Chinese soy sauce market.