soy sauce 豉油

Soy sauce is one most important cooking staple in many Asian cultures. In my childhood we used to have neighborhood stores that sells mostly fermented food products. These stores sell nearly exclusively just fermented products and cooking condiments. Many of these fermented products and cooking condiments became more difficult to find even in Hong Kong and China now. If you can find them in containers their quality is generally mixed and very pricey compared to the days when you can buy in burk just enough of each to cook a meal.This kind of stores all but vanished now in Hong Kong. When I was in Beijing in 2010 I stumbled upon this over 100 year old fermented food store and I was so envy. It has all these fermented food in huge ceramic containers. Many of them I last tasted since my childhood.


While I was in Japan I also encounter an old world soy product factory and store. It sell nothing but fermented soy products including a variety of soy sauce. They gave visitors to taste the samples and the quality and taste of the more expensive were truly exquisite. The very best one cost as much as a very good bottle of expensive wine.

In recent year I've begun to explore dishes that utilize these diverse ingredients, many are which household dishes that are seldom seen in the West.

That bring it to my post. I ran out of light soy sauce so I pick up a jug in my shopping trip. Came home I noticed it is not exactly the same as the jug that I just used up even though they were both light soy sauce produced by the same manufacturer.

You see, light soy sauce in Chinese is called 生抽. It has been around as long as soy sauce and is not the "light" version with the reduced sodium that the manufacturer charges you more money and gives you less. 生抽 literally translated as drawn from raw. Generally Chinese has 2 kinds of soy sauces. The light and the dark one. The dark one is called 老抽 which translate to old draw. Light and dark soy sauce is like light and dark beers and you use them for different purposes. Very often, in addition to the taste differences you choose it because of the color of the cooked food; such as I used dark soy sauce 老抽 for making steamed pork belly with salted radish leaves 梅菜扣肉 or for making shanghai style noodle 上海麵.

Most often for dipping, light soy sauce is preferred due to the lighter and less sweet taste.

Here I set out 4 different soy sauce to taste the difference. All these are very good but am sure nowhere like the ones produced in the soy product factory I visited in Japan.

left to right - kikkoman standard (a light soy sauce), pearl river bridge superior light soy sauce, pearl river bridge gold label superior light soy sauce, pearl river bridge superior dark soy sauce

here shows the subtle difference in the two pearl river bridge superior light soy sauces

I always buy the family size container due to the more economic unit price. May be someday I would buy a restaurant size for even cheaper unit price. It can easily 1/20 the cost compared to buying a bottle size.