Looking back, it seems sacrilegious that our grandparents – even our parents – would bark ‘pass the salt’ without first trying their meat and two vegetables. Yet how many of us, when it comes to tucking into a bowl of steaming noodles or fat wontons, reach for the soy sauce in much the same way? It’s become a store cupboard staple; a regular feature of 61% of British kitchens, and comparable to mint sauce and apple sauce in sales value terms. Of course, not all soy sauces are equal. Long story short, soy sauce is made by steaming and fermenting soybeans for a few months before draining and filtering the rich, flavourful liquid. Short story long, this is a condiment of infinite variety, uses and quality.
The origins of soy sauce lie in China during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 AD), where clever cooks fermented soy beans to make a paste. One of the world’s earliest seasonings, this paste eventually evolved into soy sauce and spread to Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam throughout subsequent centuries, adapting to each culture’s tastes and needs along the way. Chinese soy sauce and Japanese-style soy sauce (known as shoyu) are the most commonly available of these varieties – though shoyu is clearer and thinner than its ancestral counterpart. Equally, while both Japanese and Chinese soy sauces are divided into light and dark, between the countries these black and white distinctions mean quite different things.
