Soy Sauce

We love fermented foods at Di Bruno Bros., so much that we spin far beyond love to obsession, and as far as expertise. It’s brilliant, really, offering a minor portion of our food supply to the friendly microbes to be metabolized into lactic acid or alcohol, protecting the greater share (human's share, lion's share, angel's share, take your pick) from the not-so-friendly microbes. There’s more to it than preventing spoilage, though. Fermentation produces tastiness, and not just ordinary tastiness. The complex tastiness, the umami, that which we swoon to. Our food is chock full of complex biomolecules, thousands of little parts held together by forces greater than us. The friendly microbes break these down into smaller, more easily metabolized pieces, but even after the microbes are long dead and gone, their active enzymes remain (this would be a great dystopian food plot for anyone looking to write their next thriller). This is why many fermented foods get more complex as they age. The shorter and varied strands of proteins and lipids, alongside caramelized sugars, are what produce all the varied and complex flavors and aromas we desire and adore. It happens in cheese; it happens in beer; it happens in pickles and old-school salamis. However, even as lovers of and experts on fermented foods, we have, until recently, ignored what I am quite comfortable saying is the most widely consumed fermented food in the world: soy sauce.   Soy sauce has been made as far back as the second century, CE. It started as a spin on the fish sauce, the flavorful condiment made by fermenting tasty, tiny, silvery fish, in which soy beans supplemented the fish as a protein source during lean times. Eventually, soy supplanted fish altogether. The Japanese started making soy sauce, which they call shoyu, in the tenth century, when Buddhist monks brought the technique from China. The monks skimmed the tamari, liquid that dispelled from the making of miso, from the solid fermented bean paste (sound familiar, curds and whey?). The French may have their mother sauces, but soy sauce is the mother of all condiments. In fact, the work ketchup is derived from an Indonesian word for soy sauce: kecap.   Soy sauce is made in a two-step procedure. First, soy beans, and, often, wheat, are soaked, drained, and tossed with a mold culture, which penetrates the beans and starts to break down the proteins and sugars. The beans are then soaked in brine, halting further mold growth without inhibiting the enzymatic activity. More tasty compounds are unraveled and recombined, thus proliferating the amount and diversity of flavors. The sauce is then strained and pasteurized. Now, before the pro-raw-camp throws their hands up, the pasteurization of soy sauce is not merely an industrial food-safety measure. Not only does the process aid in the clarification of the sauce, it also adds another point of cooking, where the biomolecules can undergo even more browning reaction, further complicating its flavor, leaving us with a liquid made of beans that tastes, quite honestly, like properly salted and deeply seared meat. Yum.   The ratio of soy to wheat used can vary the flavor profile of the sauce, soy providing more proteins and wheat more sugars. Some, but not all, in fact, not most, soy sauces are wheat free, so if you’ve recently chosen a new made-up allergy, we have one for you.   We now carry two Japanese soy sauces by Takuko: tamari shoyu and the white shoyu. These differ not merely in color, but in content, flavor profile, and use. The white shoyu contains a much higher percentage of wheat, contributing to the clarified alcohol content. The aroma is floral, even a touch fruity, and the clarity is noticeable in the mouthfeel. This is wonderful to season something that you wish not to discolor (rice and white fleshed fish, for example). I recommend the white shoyu for delicate muscled fish, like hamachi or any of the true basses (something without too much meatiness or fat) or to evoke the brighter side of salmon. Try it with some yuzu juice (yeah, we got that) for a ceviche spin (halibut or scallops would kill it here). A touch of white sugar and rice wine vinegar would take this a long way as a seasoning starter. The Takuko tamari is soybean based, without wheat (note again, if you've chosen an allergy as of late). It’s dark in color and has more body than the white shoyu, but in the grand scheme of soy sauces it is beautifully clarified. There is a lot of matiness going on in this sauce, and I recommend it with the fattier, meatier, bolder fish: tuna, salmon, mackerel. Its caramel qualities make it perfect for a preparation with brown sugar and sherry vinegar.