A Guide to Choosing the Best Soy Sauce (2024)

FAQs

How to choose the best soy sauce? ›

The Best Soy Sauce for Your Kitchen

Ideally, though, you'll want to pick a soy sauce with no added MSG and as pure in flavor as you can get, such as San-J Tamari Soy Sauce and other Asian Cooking Sauces. After your purchase, experiment with several kinds of soy sauce as you test new healthier snacks and dishes at home.

Brigman warns that “if a mold should develop, or the soy sauce has an off or foul odor, or has changed in texture, it must be discarded.” Light, oxygen, temperature, and time are the usual culprits in diminishing freshness of a product, but soy sauce longevity can even be affected by the type of bottle it's stored in.

Typical Japanese households stock just 1 or 2 types of soy sauce, unless they are really into cooking. The most widely used type by far is koikuchi (濃い口）soy sauce. Koikuchi literally means 'dark mouth'.

The biggest difference between Tamari and liquid aminos is that tamari is fermented, while liquid aminos are not. Because amino acids are the building blocks of protein, which is essential to the human diet, liquid aminos boast many health perks, especially to anyone sticking to a plant-based diet.

You'll often see a distinction within brands between a regular and a “premium” product. The difference is that the premium soy sauce is the first batch extracted from the fermentation process.

Soy sauce can be kept unopened in the pantry and away from sources of heat. It's safe to be left in the pantry once opened, too, but the flavor may change over time. “If you use soy sauce infrequently, it may be best to refrigerate it to extend its shelf life,” Edwards says.

Japanese Soy Sauce/shoyu

Kikkoman soy sauce is the best-selling shoyu in the world. It has a complex natural brewing (fermentation) process – a special aspergillus mould is added to steamed soy beans and roasted wheat to produce a “koji” mash to which water and salt is added.

Can You Use Expired Soy Sauce? Technically, using expired soy sauce is possible as long as there are no evident signs of spoilage. The date on the bottle serves more as a “best by” guideline rather than a hard “discard after” directive. However, its rich flavor might have diminished over time.

To put it simply, light soy sauce is used for seasoning and dark soy sauce is used for adding colour to dishes. Light soy sauce is golden brown in colour and rich in taste to add flavour during marinating and seasoning stage. It uplifts the flavour of any meat, noodles or rice dishes.

What is the difference between Chinese soy sauce and Japanese soy sauce? ›

The biggest difference between Chinese and Japanese soy sauce is that Japanese soy sauces are brewed with roasted wheat instead of wheat flour. Japanese soy sauce also uses a bit less salt and the final brew errs on the sweeter side.

China is the largest producer and consumer of soy sauce globally, with several major brands that are widely recognized and consumed in the country and around the world.

Koikuchi shoyu is the most commonly used soy sauce in the Japanese kitchen, and it's likely what you think of when you think of soy sauce. Most major supermarket brands available in the US, like Kikkoman's All-Purpose Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce, don't indicate a type on the label, but they are koikuchi shoyu.

Koon Chun Soy Sauces are our number one pick of Chinese soy sauces. Koon Chun is made in Hong Kong with the basic ingredients of Canadian soybeans, sea salt, wheat flour and water without additives. Koon Chun soy sauces are widely recommended in Chinese cooking communities.

THERE ARE FIVE TYPES OF SOY SAUCE

The five types, as classified by JAS (Japan Agricultural Standards), are common, light color, tamari, refermented, and extra light color. This type accounts for around 80% of domestic production volume, and is the most general type.

Light soy sauce is saltier and used more for flavour, and dark soy sauce is generally thicker, less salty and slightly sweeter than light soy sauce, so ideal for adding colour. Dark soy sauce adds intensity and colour to my Soy Sauce Chicken & Noodles.

Appearance: Choose handsome, clean beans with uniform size and shape. That means the beans were carefully grown and selected for your purchase. Color: Despite the variety of colorful soybeans, the light beige or pale yellow soy beans are most commonly sold and used for making tofu.