Check out Made In's Carbon Steel pan collection that I used in this video ➔ madein.cc/0224-ethan (Thanks again for sponsoring!) Here is the table with all of the Soy Sauces I used throughout this video: ethanchlebowski.notion.site/9b5dc7db971d40b0bb200fc0cbb78b33?v=1799613d5b98498496a427be88546891&pvs=4 Also I already have a couple solid deep dive ideas lined up for the next couple of months, but what should we get into this summer?
We love our carbon steel pans, but it was surprising to hear someone refer to carbon steel as "light." Woks specifically are thin metal, so those aren't too heavy I guess, but otherwise carbon steel skillets are only light compared to cast iron 😂
Please make a deep dive video on butter! There are so many kinds at the store, it's hard to know what to choose from. I recently started making homemade butter too, so hopefully that can also be included. Amazing video as always, thanks for all the work you put into this!
If only people would stop using salted butter. It's literally just salt and butter. You can just salt the recipe. And when you spread it on your food, you're not accidentally oversalting your food at the same time. (If you want the most delicious butter for finishing food, find natural process butter, like Amish roll butter. The difference is wild.)
@@KevinJDildonikNobody needs to stop using salted butter… You would just need to use less to no additional salt in your recipe. If someone doesn’t understand the difference between salted and unsalted butter, then they’re probably using Pinterest recipes and no type of butter is saving that dish.
It’s on the list! Likely going to wait until the fall on this one, so it drops during peak baking season. Want to do tests with sautéing in butter vs baking with butter vs sauces, etc.
@@KevinJDildonikAdam Ragusa did a video on this; salted butter used to have way more salt in it than it does now. I’ve literally used salted butter in baking recipes before and the resulting product was not any more salty
My parents (Japanese) typically use kikkoman, but like special soy sauces for sashimi or sushi. Relatively recently, we've been a able to get dashi-soy sauce, which our whole family loves. It's got more dashi flavour and isn't so salty, and goes so well with sushi and sashimi. You can also make shoyu-koji by fermenting shoyu with koji yourself, and it imparts a beautiful sweet-umami, rounded and very complex flavour.
Great video! Some observations: 1. Most Asian recipes call for (a little bit of) salt in addition to the soy sauce; westerners have somehow gotten into their heads that soy sauce is used in place of salt. That’s probably why the La Choy (and to a lesser extent the Kikkoman, since it’s brewed here) are saltier. (Imported Kikkoman is less salty than the domestic stuff.) 2. Kikkoman is just a much better soy sauce than people think it is. It’s the daily driver even for a lot of Japanese people. We’re really lucky to have a traditionally brewed soy sauce made in the US that’s available basically everywhere. 3. Thai soy sauces are much milder because they tend to be used in combination with fish sauce and often oyster sauce. 4. Didn’t see one in the video, but for dipping and sauces I highly recommend a Japanese double fermented saishikomi. They make a regular batch of the (koikuchi) shoyu, then brew another one, replacing the brine with the first batch. So you get extra savoriness and flavor without extra salt. It’s really lovely. 5. Which reminds me, the “light” shoyu (usukuchi) is probably best avoided unless a recipe specifically calls for it. I find it pretty harsh. Fortunately, almost all the shoyu we get in the US is the “dark” (koikuchi), which isn’t any darker than Chinese/Korean/Thai “light” soy sauce.
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 Exactly that imho as well, since salt is perceived as "an enemy" to be avoided. Meanwhile, China and Japan have high rates of stomach cancers for a reason.
for some brands they're over salted almost to the point of how the hell can you eat that. Thats probably where thats from esp when its the cheap shit, buy mid range stuff and that goes away I find at least with NA stuff, then yeah I salt. You're 100% correct though glutamates do not equal salt
@@SterbenCyrodill last I checked salt doesn't give you cancer lol (otherwise Europe would be in a LOT of trouble). Could be the nukes that were dropped... or maybe the use of some gnarly toxic chemicals that are weirdly allowed for consumption, as for China... eh maybe dont eat stuff from there - due to being uber poor they tend to get real desperate and do all kinds of werid things to produce and meat - like filling their animals full of anti-biotics so they gain water weight and so on.
I feel like Ethan kind of only scratched the surface here and didn't really dive too deep like he's done in similar past videos. Even the tests weren't that great. Multiple dashi with different soy sauces would've been interesting to try for instance.
Currently in the gym, listened to Adrian Von ziegler and RUclips decided that "In this video were doing a deep dive into the world of soy sauce." is what I needed for my next set
Southeast Asian married to an East Asian and living in the US here. We always try to cook dishes from our home country that’s not easy to get here in the US. I've got a wide variety of soy sauces in my kitchen, each with its own specific use - stir fry, dipping, sauce, porridge, soup, you name it. It's crucial to know when to use each type; it's not just about the taste. For instance, Kecap Manis is completely different from the rest, it’s specific to South East Asian dishes and will completely ruin the taste if you use it for sushi. Thanks for the great content! It's really informative, and I can imagine the effort behind it. ❤️
@@MRSketch09actually yes, especially if you are following a recipe, the difference in salt could really affect the dish. It's not too different from having to stock different vinegars which vary in intensity
@@MRSketch09 TL;DR: yup, at least to make typical/popular recipes that use soy sauces. actually depends, if you want to make a chinese-style fried rice then yes, but if you want malay/indonesian-style ones which is predominantly sweeter, you cannot use east asian sauces to make it. That being said, a lot of popular recipes would use non-sweet soy sauce and they tend to pair better with east asian soy sauces rather than the sweet south east asian ones. If you decide to try kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) try cooking “Ayam Kecap”, this will not work with just non-sweet soy sauce and sugar!
I haven't really tried the combination on my own, but with kecap manis, I reckon you can combine soy sauce and brown sugar, and just omit the salt salt in the recipe. However, physically, kecap manis is very thick, closer to molasses, so you may need to do some reduction. Although the end result may not be comparable to kecap manis. But as an alternative it "should" work
@@MRSketch09 as a south east Asian in asia, yes, eat one does a different thing to us. What Ethan says is true, there is no one best soy sauce for anything. The soy sauce I use for my chicken rice is not the same as the one i used for my fried rice. You can but it doesn't taste the same as what we are used to. There is no such thing as bad soy suace
Ethan, I’m a huge home cook and I use soy sauce a LOT. This video was incredibly informative and I truly appreciate the level of effort and research put into it. Just wanted to say thank you, your content is awesome.
I bought three very different shoyu (Japanese soy sauces) from a company online called Japanese Taste. They're in Tokyo, I believe. These were a Christmas gift for my wife, who is a fabulous cook. Anyways, all are artisanal, family-made sauces and one is the four year old you featured here. Yes, they were expensive. We use ordinary Kikkoman for cooking. But these very special shoyu have very complex flavors and aromas, each different from the others, and are terrific for drizzling over sushi or rice. Used sparingly, the high price doesn't matter. And we like that we are supporting small family businesses keep age-old traditions alive. Great video, Ethan!
I love that after the variety of experiments you conducted and the research you did, the eventual answer you found to the thesis question “which soy sauce is better and why” ended up being: “?????????” Always love your videos.
I feel like I'm done watching his comparisons. He should do a strictly blind test to begin with to get his assessments and *then* do a brand by brand assessment. He's poisoning the well from the outset by knowing the brands/prices/etc.
I went to a Tequila distillery in Mexico one time, and the first thing the tour guide asked us was... "what is the best tequila in the world?" and a bunch of people yelled out a bunch of expensive brands... but the guide simply said, "it's the one you like." - it rings true with everything... Ethan can't tell you which one you'll like, you have to experiment just like he suggested at the end.
A Japanese acquaintance once gifted me a bottle of soy sauce from Yuasa, the birthplace of soy sauce in Japan. Nothing wrong with Kikkoman, it is a decent soy sauce, but just try a drop of Kikkoman versus a drop of Yuasa... Amazing. Over the last fifteen years, I have imported bottles a couple of times, for myself and as gifts. If you ever get the chance, to grab a bottle: don't hesitate!
If you like sea food there’s a specific type of Chinese soy sauce, which is called “steamed fish soy sauce,” that works so well with all kinds of simply or lightly cooked fish and shellfish. A simple dish: Place fish on a plate and pour the sauce around it, steam it with shredded ginger and other aromatic herbs you like. After it’s cooked add a layer of chopped scallions/green onions on top of the fish and quickly pour boiling hot oil over to bring out the aroma.
Great video doing a deep dive on this topic. As a Thai, I have all main types of Thai soy sauces at home, plus Japanese and Korean soy sauces to use when I cook their recipes. I wanted to share all the 4 types of Thai soy sauce here. (The cap colors are standardized across all Thai brands.) 1. Thin soy sauce (white cap): Basic soy sauce. Milder taste. All purpose cooking (usually used alongside seasoning soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce) 2. Thin seasoning soy sauce (yellow cap): Is the white cap+some added seasoning ingredients. slightly saltier and more umami than the white caps. Used for all purpose cooking, dipping, or quick splash onto cooked food such as fried eggs and congee. 3. Seasoning soy sauce (green cap): Is the chemical processed soy sauce+added seasoning ingredients. Saltiest among all 4. Great for marinating and all purpose cooking. 4. Black soy sauce / sweet soy sauce: Deep color with sweetness and saltiness, umami flavor. Used for color and for adding sweetness to some savory dishes such as Pad See Yew, Pad Krapow, and Thai dry noodles. Also used for making dipping sauces for crispy pork belly and Chicken rice sauce. And you're right that it could probably used in baking. The brand once went viral for their ice cream pop-up shop, where they put this sauce on top of vanilla soft serve ice cream (it tastes unbelievably good!)
I absolutely love that you made this video. I’m from Hawaii and we use (in our household) multiple different soy sauces because of the reasons you just made. Each soy sauce has its place in the kitchen depending on what you’re making and what you’re trying to accomplish. And unless you’re familiar with different soy sauces you’re really missing out on different flavor profiles.
@@sketchmastertask3093 I grew up with that being our everyday shoyu and it’s still my go-to. I’ve been finding them at Asian markets near me. Maybe try one and see if they have it there?
Thank you so much in sharing your truth. Was raised on Oahu until I was married 53yrs ago. I totally agree with you. I wish I could get back and purchase my favorite’s again but it is not possible for me to come back home again until my funeral so no hope. So sad. Please enjoy your favorite’s for me. Would love to know what your favorite’s are. Blessings to You. 🙏♥️
Ethan, next time, I strongly suggest you interview home-cooks from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thai, et al. You will discover that each type of soy sauce has its purpose and it’s common to find a wide variety of different soy sauce in the same kitchen. They will be able to explain when a particular soy sauce is used, and for which dishes. ❤
Maggi does have a distinct taste. However, Maggi is not soy sauce because it is made from hydrolyzed wheat protein and additives, while soy sauce contains soybeans. Believe it or not, Switzerland is where MAGGI originates,
You pretty much got it right, Maggi & Golden Mountain are “finishing/dipping sauces” that can be used straight out of the bottle. Where as Soy sauce is for cooking, and to make it into a dipping sauce you’d need to mix it with a few things.
Living in Thailand and cooking for my family, this is how i do it; Thai soy sauce for cooking. Kikoman for dipping. Chinese sour soy sauce for dumplings.
As an Indonesian, seeing Bango was wild. We use them pretty much daily and use it for a lot of things, from fried rice to dipping sauces. What I personally do is usually mix chilli sauce / sambal with the soy sauce.
but it wasnt used. it's kinda important in there though because I think it was such an oddity since most soy sauce is salty and sour. so sweet soy sauce was really a specific specimen.
Yes, here in Malaysia my kids discovered Bango from our previous live-in home helper who brought a stash of Bango from her town in Java. I also enjoyed the old ABC kicap which has now been taken over by Heinz. There's also numerous variations of locally brewed kicap masin and kicap manis here in Malaysia. Southeast Asia is truly the melting pot for numerous Asian cuisine.
Hi Ethan, I'm indonesian and I'd say the Bango brand is Kecap Manis- different from most soy sauces in the video because it is intended to be sweet. It's made with black soybeans to start, fermented similarly to other soy sauces (probably most similar to ones of SE Asia or southern China origin), and then mixed with palm sugar. It is used as the main flavoring for Indonesian-style Fried Rice (Nasi Goreng), braises (Semur), and sauce for skewers (Sate/Satay). Also, famous struggle meals here are white rice with kecap manis and rice crackers (Kerupuk) with kecap manis lol We also have salty soy sauce (Kecap Asin), we use less of it than the sweet type, and we cook with it similarly to the other sauces in the video. My favourite use of it is in the broth for Fujian/Hokkien noodles (Bakmi). All said, SE Asia food is as diverse as the people, so you're very welcome to explore! There's definitely something for everyone. Great video as always!
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 when I checked the label, it's around 8g/15mL which means it's half sugar by weight lol, it's soy mash flavored brown sugar syrup basically
The hydrolized style of soy sauce is what Maggi is. The Swiss developed that process, the French took it with them and introduced it to Vietnam, which is why it gets used there, since it is such a different taste from genuine local soy sauces.
Hello Ethan, I wanted to share some insights on the Chinese style of soy sauce, which comes in various types, each suited for different culinary applications. 普通酱油 (Ordinary Soy Sauce) is a type that sits between 生抽 (Light Soy Sauce) and 老抽 (Dark Soy Sauce) in terms of characteristics. It has a darker color, more intense flavor, and a slightly bitter and saltier taste. It requires longer heating to develop a rich, soy aroma, so it's best not to add it right before the dish is finished cooking. The production techniques for soy sauce vary slightly between the northern and southern regions of China. In the colder northern areas, "solid-state fermentation" is more common, while the warmer and more humid conditions of the south favor "liquid-state fermentation." The first extraction of soy sauce is called 头抽油 (First Extract Soy Sauce), followed by 二抽油 (Second Extract) and 三抽油 (Third Extract) for the subsequent fermentations. 生抽 (Light Soy Sauce), made from a blend of the first, second, and third extracts, is ideal for enhancing the umami flavor and for use in cold dishes. Notably, 头抽酱油 (First Extract Soy Sauce) contains the highest amount of umami substances, making light soy sauce with a higher proportion of first extract of superior quality. "味极鲜" is another type of light soy sauce, which includes flavor enhancers to make its taste even more prominent and richer. It can be used as a substitute for MSG or chicken essence to enhance the flavor and texture of dishes. 老抽 (Dark Soy Sauce) is made by further processing and concentrating these extracts. It is darker in color, richer in flavor, more viscous, and saltier. Its primary use is for coloring dishes, such as in braised meats, marinated dishes, and stews, sometimes with added caramel color to deepen the shade even further. 蒸鱼豉油 (Steamed Fish Soy Sauce) is also a type of soy sauce, made from soybeans. It is designed to enhance the flavor of dishes, often including sweeteners to balance its salty taste, making it particularly suitable for seafood. While there are many more types of soy sauce, these are some of the basics that can significantly influence the outcome of your cooking. Each type has its unique purpose and can elevate your dishes in different ways.
BTW 金蘭 which you used in the video for fried rice is ok. I used to work in a Chinese restaurant and the Sifu always used a big mysterious plastic can without any label on it. I think that is the mixture of soy sauce or something but that special sauce for fried rice is GOAT
Love it! It really is crazy how much variation there is when it comes to the production process in a single country's soy sauce varieties, let alone across different countries. I would have loved to get even more granular in this video and thought of about 100 more tests I could have done haha. For example, some day if I get a test kitchen with lots of willing taste testers, I'd love to revist the fried rice test with even more variations and also different types (vegetable fried rice, shrimp fried rice, chicken, etc.)
@@RealMisterDoge I typed most of the part in Chinese and like a small proportion in English then I asked GPT to translate it for me cuz it is very hard to translate some of the Chinese terms in English, especially in the field that I'm not that familiar about
This is the first cooking channel I've come across that acknowledges the human element in food tasting as well as the science and history. Instant subscribe.
Great video but maybe a slip of the tongue at 10:15 when we learn that a japanese tamari and a korean soy sauce is made with NO SOY BEANS at all :p Of course it's no WHEAT as it says in the text on the screen :)
I always use Kikkoman, and so do my parents, and so did my grandparents. Its become a very nostalgic and familiar flavor for me, to the point where other soy sauces just don't taste quite right.
I used to use kikoman and it was so salty, even the low sodium ones. Once I started going to the asian markets and getting other asian soy sauces, I can't ever have kikoman ever again.
I usually do use Kikkoman, but I do have a bottle of that mizu barrel-aged soy sauce that I sometimes break out when I want something more than just saltiness. It's less salty and sweeter so I usually have to add salt when I use unlike with the kikkoman, but it's a much more complex flavor. It all depends on how much of a spotlight you want on the soy sauce or whether it should just be background character in the food.
@@way9883 I know, but other varieties are much better. I feel like people go for it cuz it's the known name, like Tabasco for hot sauce but there are so many other better hot sauces out there.
Being married to a Thai women I have learned so much about sauces. Using a Chinese or Japanese soy sauce in a Thai dish changes the flavors substantially. These cultures have cultivated these sauces to work with there cuisines. This really opened my mind and learned to appreciate where ingredients come from.
As a thai, i cant agree more. The fat kid brand light soy sauce has that distinct flavour no other brand has! Not saying that one is better than others. They are all just distinctive.
@@zoelin83 LOL i call it fat boy brand too! its healthy boy but i can swear it use to be fat boy or its the mandela effect xD its my favorite brand, specifically the mushroom one made with shiitakes
@@colbicolbiWTF Recently new brands were launched, some worth trying but the fat boy light soy sauce is irreplaceble! It's healthy boy indeed but from the logo, that boy doesnt seem too healthy. Haha
Thai black soy sauce is also called sweet soy sauce in thailand. It's usually eaten with hainanese chicken rice. Thai people mostly use sweet soy mostly for sweetness and color rather than salty and umami flavor. Salty and umami soy sauces in thailand are not that dark in color. When making fried rice most places would put both thin soy and dark soy for color.
Kecap manis bango, or bango brand sweet soy sauce, is in fact, an entirely different kind of soy sauce originated from central java region. As an Indonesian, we use it as entirely different sauce, only some times mixed together with soy sauce for cooking. We call soy sauce "kecap asin", and sweet soy sauce "kecap manis". We do not use it for baking. Though it is sweet, it's still considered as savory sauce.
Kecap is the stuff that comes in a little packet with Mi Goreng noodles, isn't it? I'd heard (westerner here) that it was a local variation on Ketchup, or perhaps the origin of ketchup that sailors tried to replicate when they arrived home.
Indonesian sweet soy sauce, or kecap manis, is a staple of Indonesian cuisine. Kecap manis is a common ingredient in grilling and stir-frying. Kecap manis is rarely used for soups during the cooking process, though people might add it later as a condiment on the dinner table. Kecap Manis is also used side by side with its counterpart, Sambal sauce, and mixed both for sweetness and spicyness.
It's also where the English language gets "ketchup" from (kecap) and over time they transformed the more fish/soy based sauce into the modern tomato ketchup.
I find it incredibly difficult to source good Indonesian soy sauce in the US. You always see ABC brand, but the flavor is quite unattractive to me. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I can find Conimex (technically Dutch instead of Indonesian). It has a very distinct and well-balanced flavor. Doesn't work as a substitute for Chinese or Japanese soy sauces, of course. But in Indonesian dishes it works so incredibly well. Highly recommended if you can get your hands on it. Of course, if you are in Europe, it's often super easy to find. So, there's that.
Hey, Ethan, I also wanna add that in a lot of Chinese and Japanese cooking, soy sauce is not always gonna be used by itself as an application. If you really wanna get good soy sauce, you gotta cook and season it. A lot of times, soy sauce that's used as a condiment to pour over or used to dip, like Cantonese steamed fish and cheung fun, is often a blend that's made in house or seasoned and cooked with aromatics, such as ginger, garlic, and/or scallions, and a bit of sugar or vinegar. Same with gyoza dipping sauce, stir fry some garlic and ginger and some vinegar. I definitely recommend Lucas Sin's videos on Cantonese steamed eggs and fried egg over rice as an example.
I personally love to mix light and dark soy sauce in 1:1 ratio with garlic, spring onion, ginger, coriander roots, coriander seeds and a chunk of vietnamese cinnamon. I then add a bit of water and heat it over low flame for 1-2h until it becomes thick and velvety. The resulting sauce is just wonderful for dumplings after straining. It imparts so many dark, earthy flavors it's simply unbelievable
I like to use Thai Golden Mountain sauce as a base and mix in various flavor enhancers to create an "umami sauce." Golden Mountain sauce already has Disodium-5 Inosinate and Disodium-5 Guanylate, which enhance the umami taste reception of Glutamate, which I add using MSG. You can do the same with plain soy sauce as a base. Soy sauce already has a lot of amino acids, but you could also add other flavorings to soy sauce to provide any extra enhancement: yeast extract, mushroom extract, bouillon paste, miso paste, tomato paste, liquid smoke, caramelized sugar, etc. They all combine to concentrate and optimize (according to your own taste) that savory experience (umami, but also kokumi and other taste reception involving browning and caramelization)
Try adding black garlic to your mix if you haven't already. The taste profile is very different from normal garlic and adds a great umami depth to dishes.
Lee Kum Kee is the best soy sauce for anything with little sweet and full flavor. Kikkoman is so so and American love it. We use Golden Mountain soy sauce for general cooking only.
I distill my own whiskey and age it in small 1 or 2L oak barrels. Sometimes i put soy sauce or balsamic in the old whiskey barrels and let it oak for a few months. It can make some interesting flavor profiles. The small barrels have a high surface area to fluid volume so it doesn't take long to get some interesting flavors.
What crime did you commit to be forced to taste La Choy? I obviously have a Japanese bias, but it’s due to purchasing and taste testing as many as I could try. The Japanese are just the most complicated and delicious. I would love to try the coconut profile too. But for me it’s about which shoyu to use. I like white shoyu for sashimi, cooking fish and chicken dishes. I love the whiskey barrel aged for beef. I love the Sakura shoyu for vegetable. I love the aged ones for pork and beef. I think it’s about which shoyu the dish calls for, not which is objectively the best.
The Bango sauce is from Indonesia and called kakap manis, manis literally means sweet. It is specifically meant to be used in fried rice/noodles and satay sauces.
We've got a bottle of sweet soy at home that I'll often use as a quick substitution for teriyaki or that kind of flavoring. Sweet glaze basically, or a sweet addition to rice, etc. Very different stuff from regular soy or tamari - kind of surprised it was on the list at all
kecap not kakap brother, kecap is ketchup and kakap is snapper. And its really sweet so we don't use it on it own. We sometimes use it with onion, cilantro, pepper, chili, and so many other alternative to balance the taste. So if you sipping it on its own i agree that what you can taste is sweet (in my childhood sometimes i like to poke the sauce and take it strait to my mouth XD)
Your former coloniser here. I'd like to thank you for the ketjap manis, ketjap asin, kroepoek, all the sambals, atjar tjampoer, babi pangang, sate, satesaus, rendang, and that mixture of cocos and peanuts, what's it calked again? Oh, and spekkoek of course!!
I've watched like three of your videos now and I'm truly blown away by the level of effort and content you're able to fit into these videos. You've earned my subscription. I look forward to seeing more of your content.
Wait till you understand you learned nothing and his videos are just full of questions on which he takes 10 mins to answer and fills them up with irrelevant information to make you feel like he said something smart.
I use Chinese (light and dark) for fried rice and for stir-frying, Korean for other kind of recipes likes sauces since that’s what I can get in bulk at Costco, and Japanese for sushi.
That's quite an arsenal! Are you Asian / do you use these sauces most of the time? It would take me a very, very long time to go through that many bottles (I'm European). Although I guess they keep forever anyway...
@10:21 he says that Tamari is made from virtually no soybeans. I was always under the impression that it was made "of" mostly soybeans. A knit pick was that he also says sodium carbonate is the same thing as baking soda. I'm not sure which is the compound that is added to neutralize the chemically hydrolyzed soy product but those are 2 different chemicals.
Yeah, doesn't seem too many people caught that. Or maybe he didn't want to say they use washing soda. They also use sodium hydroxide to neutralize the acid, so I’d imagine they either use whatever they get that’s cheaper or just what the company has always used. Sodium hydroxide would affect the taste the least since it would just leave table salt and water instead of carbonates.
I've tried 5 or 6 soy sauces through my adulthood and no matter what I do I always go back to Kikkomans. I'm born and raised American and I think the nostalgia shines through. That being said I'll definitely be picking up some different sauces when I hit the store next
Try Yamasa brand Japanese soy sauce, as I noted in my comment. You'll never go back to Kikkoman if you compare them side by side. And, pick up some black bean paste at an Asian store, which allows boosting the fermented/umami flavor without overdosing on salt.
I grew up on Kikkoman, but was never a huge fan except for sushi. I tried the Japanese Kikkoman a few years back from Ranch 99 and found something I loved. It is slightly salty but the flavors are so complex compared to some others I have tried. As noted in other comments, Aloha Hawaiian soy sauce is tasty for cooking with.
Another type of shoyo you could try is Aloha shoyu. My mom's family is from Hawaii and I grew up always using Aloha shoyu since it was what she grew up with since it was founded in Hawaii by five Japanese families back in like the 60s. I like the more sweet flavor to it compared to very salty like La Choy might be considered.
🤣 As soon as I saw the name of the video, I scoured that screenshot to see if Aloha Shoyu was represented and went 😭. Hahaha. I'd argue it's a little saltier, which is why I love it. But glad to see someone else pulling for it too! 😆🥰🌺
I grew up with Kikkoman's, and hated it. Then I was assigned to Pearl Harbor, and some friends said I had to try Aloha shoyu. I was immediately hooked! I couldn't get enough of it. Unfortunately, now where I live in the mid-west it's not available. So I've settled on any of a variety of Filipino soy sauces.
Yep! 100% agree with you! This is the absolute best Shoyu. My parents moved to the Big Island many years ago and became great friends with their native neighbors who introduced them to actual home-made soy sauce (Aloha Shoyu was the store-match). The entire reason I watched this video was because I was hoping he would 'find' this magical Hawaiian soy sauce. It's the best! In my opinion.
18:00 “Soyces” I’m using that from now on. Soy Sauce takes too long to say, so I’m saying “Soyces” now. Haha I don’t know if that was a mistake or not, but I like it!
He does things like this a lot because he reads off a script to create the voice over. Sometimes he'll even say things that are clearly a written typo. It's pretty funny.
Miso master brand tamari is the best…it’s a byproduct of miso production. It’s more expensive than the regular stuff, but certainly not the most expensive product out there.
Fantastic video- I will have to revisit to retain so much great information. Just after watching this, I went to my pantry where I do have 3 different varieties of soy sauce, did a taste test and was floored by the differences in taste, and when I examined the sodium levels/carbs, etc. it really hit home everything you've said here. Thank you for a great video, Ethan!
Let me add my two cents here. Brazil has the largest Japanese origin population outside Japan and also has a large Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean population. Soy sauce in Brazil has maize as the fourth main ingredients, creating a very unique flavor that is not available in traditional soy sauce. This created a whole population of Brazil - not of asian descent - who enjoy soy sauce, but looks for this maize taste in soy sauce. My mother was a diehard misso fan and she made our misso herself at home, with fungi imported from Japan in disguised as bookmarks.
6:08 - While wheat does impart a mild "wheaty" flavor to beer, it isn't the primary reason for the differences in aroma and flavor between IPAs and wheat beers. It mostly comes down to the different strains of hops and yeast used for the two styles.
I think a few of the other comments raised some important points: the flavor profiles are influenced by the context in which they're used in their respective cuisines; also, leaving aside production quality concerns, since there's not really a generally superior flavor profile (and that you mostly don't use soy sauce on its own), your expertise in using and blending flavors matters more. That being said, although I've tried many more special Japanese soy sauces (shoyu), I remain partial to the Chinese flavor profile. Perhaps I'm simply more acclimated to their taste or usage in sauce-making, and how they interact with the ingredients/cooking process. For Chinese soy sauces though, I mostly buy only Taiwan or USA made from Kimlan (金蘭 / jīn lán) or Wan Ja Shan (萬家香 / wàn jiā xiāng) out of caution, and they have quite a few of their own special brews to choose from as well. As a final note, I don't usually do this, but the pronunciation of "jiang" (醬） is rather unrecognizable. The "a" is closer to an open front unrounded vowel, and should have a downward inflection. It's also kind of awkward to put words like these which don't really have grammatical number distinctions into an English context; probably best to treat them as their own plural forms instead of adding -s/-es.
As a home cook and a guy who works in a kitchen professionally, I think kikkoman is the best all purpose soy sauce due to flavor profile and simplicity of ingredients. Having only 5 ingredients, being water, soybeans, wheat, salt, that bacteria that makes them ferment as ingredients is very simple and avoids a lot of chemical stuff, which matters to me. The flavor profile is also less salty than la choy. Unless you're going for something specific where kikkoman isn't appropriate, I think it is an excellent choice.
You don't have it in your shootout here, and it's $7.50 a bottle, but the very finest soy sauce you can get is Kimlan Super Special Soy Sauce. Just watch it in the bottle as you tilt it back and forth; it stains almost like dark soy sauce does and it lingers on the glass. It's brewed with licorice root for depth of flavor. It's very smooth on the palate with none of that medicinal shock you get from the soy sauce you grew up with. Try one bottle and you'll never go back.
That is my go-to everyday soy sauce. It's very nice. I also have the $41 one in the thumbnail. It's less salty but with a very rich umami flavor. I reserve that one for sushi/sashimi.
The main thing is that different soy sauces are used in different ways! In Chinese cooking, usually there are three types of soy sauce you use regularly. A light soy sauce 生抽 (seasoning while cooking), dark soy sauce 老抽 (mostly for colour) and a finishing soy sauce 生酱油 usually added on some dishes (such as steamed dishes) or dipping sauces
Ethan, you're the only man on RUclips that can do the almost impossible: a deep-dive into rice. It would likely be an hour long video, but I would watch the hell out of it.
I brewed a batch of soy sauce over covid, and it turned out great, with a slight miso and peppery taste. One thing I found interesting is that the dark color only emerges if you age it in a place where it gets sunlight (or you use caramel color if you want to cheat). If you age outside the presence of sunlight then the sauce can turn cherry red.
That's correct, soy sauce and bean paste breweries here in Malaysia age the fermenting soy beans in large earthenware pots outside the yard where the covered pots are opened up during sunny days to age and darken the fermenting soy beans. The first draw soy sauce are usually the best and is usually reserved for table pouring and dipping purposes. The minimum aging period for the fermenting beans is around three to five months.
Kikkoman's. Next question. There's a reason it's the standard for most " Chinese food " places in the US and that's because it's not some overly garish sauce trying to hard. It's fermented soy beans and sodium with a few minor additions. Nothing crazy. Just enough to make it allowed overseas for health code reasons, essentially. You go to Panda Express? Kikkoman's in Panda Express branded packets. Go to any place with takeout? I guarantee you 9/10 times they use Kikkoman's because it's hard to dislike a salty sauce when that's what you need for most Asian food. Salty umami flavor.
BTW Soy Sauce in Cookies and Brownies is totally a thing. Any place where you can imagine a salted caramel like flavor, and it pairs very well with coffee, vanilla, and chocolate flavors.
I don't have 20 bottles of soy sauce for different recipes, but I do have six or so. Japanese soy sauce is the only thing I'll use for sushi, light soy sauce for Chinese and Taiwanese recipes that require a little more salt, mushroom soy sauce, Golden Mountain sauce, standard soy sauce, soy paste (which has about half of the sodium), dark for color, etc. The one thing I don't have is soy sauce labeled as low sodium. If I want that? I'll simply add some water to one of the soy sauce that I already have.
I have one that's specially blended for "steaming fish". It is really different. Restaurant would make their own in small batch by cooking their soy sauce with aromatics, but it is easier if I just buy the bottled one from the store.
The soya sauce should be added to the side of the wok instead of directly onto the rice. Doing that will wake up the soya sauce and develop better flavor, which then combines into the fried rice, giving more depth.
I picked up a bottle of Lee Kum Kee mushroom flavored dark soy sauce a few months ago, and I now use that stuff on everything. The extra umami punch from the mushroom is great.
I've become a devotee of Healthy Boy mushroom soy sauce for exactly the same reason. I normally can't stand mushrooms themselves for texture and aftertaste reasons, but the extract in this soy sauce is very different, it adds such a rich and savory OOMPH!
@@languagechefcorey the Lee Kum Kee or the Healthy Boy? I only have experience with the LKK and it doesn't smell of alcohol at all. Something must have been wrong with that bottle.
Best soy sauce that's seasoned is Kikkoman Memmi. I've used it for decades. Good for all kinds of dishes and sauces, i.e. zaru soba, tempura sauce, udon, etc. A simple dish is half an avocado, add 1 tsp sugar to pitted area and add enough Memmi to cover the sugar. Eat the avocado with some of the sauce mix.
Sweet soy (like bango) sauce uses different soybeans, it uses black soybeans, and uses palm sugar, water, and salt. fermented for several months until the surface of the soybeans is covered with mold, this part is called koji. Then the koji is soaked in a salt solution, called moromi
I'm glad you used La Choy as your example of hydrolyzed soy sauce. More folks need to know it's not the real deal -- nor are those little panda packets (Kari-Out) or W-Y ones you get at your local Chinese joint. If in doubt, look at the ingredients -- if it includes "hydrolyzed soy protein," it is not naturally fermented. Water, soybeans, salt, and wheat (sometimes) are the basis for the fermented sort; ingredient list might also include the aspergillus Koji mold as well. La Choy and its cohorts do have a place on my plate (I like them for sprinkling on plain white rice), but never in my cooking.
Well done! I loved how you mentioned the personal biases in this. I grew up in Japan, so to be, the Japanese style shoyu is obviously going to be superior. But I loved what you said at the end about simply mastering 'your' soy sauce, and then using other ingredients to account for that extra saltiness, color, sweetness, etc.
One thing I want to point out is that the type of soy sauce used in each dish in Korea is different. At your video, I can see two type of Korean soy sauce ,"Guk ganjangoy" (국간장) is used to make soup, so it's less salty and sweet. "Yangjo ganjang"(양조간장) is used for salads o dipping sauce, when cooking dishes such as stir-frying meat or rice, "jin ganjang" (진간장) is used.
TL;DR Any soy sauce is good, just make sure you check for it's own flavor and modify the recipe accordingly (whether it needs more sugar or water or whatever).
A couple years ago I did something similar and I really was able to narrow down and streamline my collection of sauces. For “light soy sauce” I like the imported from Japan, Kikkoman Marudaizu soy sauce. It works for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese dishes perfectly. I also like Lee Kum Kee Double Fermented if you want bolder. For “dark soy sauce” I find Dragonfly Black soy sauce to work well across all East Asian cuisines, it does the job of darkening and sweetening the dishes well. The only other “light soy sauce” I find essential is Healthy Boy Mushroom soy sauce for Thai food. There was always something off when I would make diff Thai curries or pad dishes and I finally caved and bought a bottle. Thai soy sauce has a brighter bouncier less roasty and fermented flavor. It also adds MSG, which I’m not opposed to. I even confirmed w my fave Thai restaurant that that’s the brand they use. I keep San J tamari for my GF ppl. And for SE Asian dishes that use “seasoning sauce” which is usually Maggi or Golden Mountain sauce, I use Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, which Andrea Nguyen says is practically the same flavor, and makes me feel better that it’s usually stocked in the Health Foods section of my grocery store.
At my house, we create a mix of 3 different soy sauces. Normal American Kikkoman 50%, 40% organic Japanese Kikkoman (way more complex and less salty), 10% traditional aged and smoked (great and complex but too much smoked flavor to use by itself). It tastes amazing.
I keep kikkoman and the $40 a bottle Yamaroku 4 year aged shoyu. I watched a documentary about traditional Japanese soy sauce and wanted to try a few so we bought a few bottles and tried them all and the Yamaroku won our taste test hands down. Now we keep both in our house at all times. They are both delicious but very different flavors. It was a fun experiment but we were swimming in soy sauce for months. Lol
@@styleme3375 Yamaroku is excellent. Kishibori is also excellent. We haven't had both at the same time to do a direct taste taste, so I don't have an opinion on which is better, but they're both great.
I used to use Kikkoman or Aloha, until I asked the asian store owner what he recommends. Wow, Assi soy sauce with kelp is amazing. Way more flavor than the others without the saltiness. I consider it the Worchesteshire sauce of soy sauces. Delicious. Try it.
@@EthanChlebowski IF you do this, please try to get hold of a swedish hotsauce called "skånsk chili", it's freaking amazing. I'd be glad to send you a bottle or two =)
We use several kinds of soysauce at home in the Philippines. 2 for cooking and the rest for dips and mixing. Gyoza, sashimi, and sushi has their own. A set of flavored ones usually for noodle dishes: garlic, spicy, or calamansi. Sometimes we mix kikoman with sugar, balsamic, or chilli. We use it for dipping sweet ham, which i like to cook with fish sauce. I think there's about 10 kinds of soy sauce in the kitchen.
Yeah, it'd be interesting to know if there's a big benefit from overnight versus, say, an hour or two versus just seasoning the meat and cooking straight-away.
@@DrGlynnWix : Yes! I have made the mistake of marinating some meat (usually chicken) too long when using citrus juice as an ingredient the marinade and the meat turns mushy. But when marinading for Char Siu I let it marinade 2 days or even a bit longer.
Hi Ethan! Im a new subscriber and I found your channel because I've been searching meal prep videos recently and your content was suggested to me. Over the last few weeks, your videos have fast become my new comfort channel and I am extremely grateful for the inspiration and information that you've provided. I've been trying to be more intentional about my health this year and the last few weeks have been tough because I started feeling very frustrated with meal planning which can be difficult with a tight work schedule. However, the way you break down the recipes (and it also helps that our taste in food is pretty similar! I love the recipes you put out) makes it less overwhelming and overall has been crucial in helping me stay on track with my food goals. Thank you so so much for what you do. I've been really enjoying this series that you're doing about comparing foods and specific ingredients. I can only imagine the research that goes into testing all of this and your content is improving lives. Sending lots of gratefulness from my tiny island in Asia.
11:20 So now I know why those little cheap packets of soy sauce you get from Chinese food places always tastes like chemical trash. I hate that stuff and I’ve always wondered what the hell it actually was, because even as a kid I knew it wasn’t soy sauce… lol to me it tastes like burned sugar, and has a hint of nail polish remover or something like that… gross.
those aged for years is for dipping, not for cooking. most people cant tell the different when using them for cooking, like fried, stew, or just need the saltiness but for plain food like boiled dumpling, the richness of aroma from aged soy sauce is very easy to impress people. best soy sauce always come from those made by small shops that you cant even find in the supermarket in Asia. But dont worry about it and just go ahead with brands like Kikkoman, I grew up and lived in Taiwan for over 30 yrs, in fact most of domestic people never tried those rare soy sauce from small vendors and happy with soy sauce from supermarket. not only because they are hard to get, but also the pricing is so high, even more expensive than the $40 one.
I’d love even just a short of you analyzing China Lily. I know it falls into a category of soy sauces you covered already, but it’s a staple in BC Indigenous cooking here in Canada. And we’ve had a few shortages and instances of price gouging on it in the past few years. It’s like, a thing. I know my biases will not allow me to accurately assess…. 😅
What about Vietnamese soy sauce? I noticed that it has a slightly different taste compare to Japanese or Korean one. Also, Maggi seasoning from France or Germany taste like soy sauce too.
Lack of maggi here is a big miss. Mid-tier balsamic vinegars are also amazing in the same recipes you'd use soy or maggi in. One of my secret weapons when cooking is making red sauce with a little soy or balsamic for that extra umami layer.
If you want to include non-soy based sauces in a video about soy sauces such as Maggi, might as well include things like Marmite, Vegemite, worcestershire sauce and also hydrolyzed plant protein too.
I have a friend who is currently dating a woman who works in the food/restaurant industry. She is a MAJOR/SERIOUS food snob. We recently met for dinner and during the meal the conversation turned to sauces/Asian foods/Asian sauces and I remarked that when making fried rice I liked to used La Choy soy sauce. She turned to me and said "Donny, why don't you just piss on the rice? It would be cheaper and taste better". She then pontificated for the next 20 minutes on the merits of Japanese and Chinese sauces. To me, taste matters over ingredients or method of preparation and I prefer La Choy. I don't care if that makes me unworthy to associate with her foodie friends.
Just ridiculously good content dude. Ethan is better than 99 percent of cooking content on network TV or streaming services. I've been watching for years man and I'll keep comin back!
While I have Chinese dark soy sauce, & a "sweet soy sauce". My main staple is from Japan, it's Kikkoman Umakuchi Shoyu. Which has the most "balanced" flavor.
_Umakuchi_ is the most common Japanese style of soy sauce, but its has a somewhat different flavor than Chinese light soy sauce. No wonder my late parents were pretty picky about the type of soy sauce they buy in a Chinese supermarket.
btw sweet soy sauce can be brewed too, im not sure about the bango sweet soy sauce since their taken by unilever company, but traditional sweet soy sauce are brewed along with the fermented soy paste but not with big wooden barrel, but with pot like pottery kinda like chinese ceramics, like ketjap tjap jawan in pekalongan they kinda taste like sweet and salty soy sauce combaine together, they are called ketjap sedeng (medium tasting soy sauce)
Interestingly enough, in the 14 & 1500s Indonesian ketjap was introduced to Britain and over hundreds of years of western bastardizations of it, we end up with American tomato ketchup
@@blockchiken Usual story is that it was introduced from China and Vietnam, with the word being from China (Hokkien word being transliterated as kê-tsiap,) and was referring to fish sauce, not soy sauces, but it was a while ago and there are a lot of factors to consider and whether it was fish sauce or soy sauce would be an interesting historical dive as they were, and are, both used similarly.
As soon as I saw this video me and my wife both said, "The best soy sauce depends on what you're trying to make" lol, we have like eight different bottles of soy sauce and each one has a purpose. I can't even begin to try narrow down a single use soy sauce
It's so funny to see someone talking about La Choy - One of my favorite meals to make myself as a kid (we were poor) was white rice + butter + la choy soy sauce So it's the taste of my childhood, though its definitely... mostly just salty haha. It's no longer carried in a lot of stores so I have to special order it. Pure nostalgia makes it one of my favs, lol.
Check out Made In's Carbon Steel pan collection that I used in this video ➔ madein.cc/0224-ethan (Thanks again for sponsoring!)
Here is the table with all of the Soy Sauces I used throughout this video: ethanchlebowski.notion.site/9b5dc7db971d40b0bb200fc0cbb78b33?v=1799613d5b98498496a427be88546891&pvs=4
Also I already have a couple solid deep dive ideas lined up for the next couple of months, but what should we get into this summer?
I would've really liked to know what would be the taste difference between the Korean regular vs. soup.
We love our carbon steel pans, but it was surprising to hear someone refer to carbon steel as "light." Woks specifically are thin metal, so those aren't too heavy I guess, but otherwise carbon steel skillets are only light compared to cast iron 😂
What about Maggi
Hi! I can't seem to find the soy sauce tasting notes sheet? Forgive me if im just missing it, but has it been shared anywhere?
Just added it to this comment, thanks for the reminder!
Perhaps the best soy sauce is the one we made along the way
I would love to make soy sauce with you baby
The soy sauce we made was terrible
I am considering making my own. I resemble this comment.
I was thinking exactly the same thing!!
I was thinking a different thing.
Please make a deep dive video on butter! There are so many kinds at the store, it's hard to know what to choose from. I recently started making homemade butter too, so hopefully that can also be included.
Amazing video as always, thanks for all the work you put into this!
If only people would stop using salted butter. It's literally just salt and butter. You can just salt the recipe. And when you spread it on your food, you're not accidentally oversalting your food at the same time. (If you want the most delicious butter for finishing food, find natural process butter, like Amish roll butter. The difference is wild.)
@@KevinJDildonikNobody needs to stop using salted butter… You would just need to use less to no additional salt in your recipe. If someone doesn’t understand the difference between salted and unsalted butter, then they’re probably using Pinterest recipes and no type of butter is saving that dish.
It’s on the list! Likely going to wait until the fall on this one, so it drops during peak baking season. Want to do tests with sautéing in butter vs baking with butter vs sauces, etc.
@@KevinJDildonikAdam Ragusa did a video on this; salted butter used to have way more salt in it than it does now. I’ve literally used salted butter in baking recipes before and the resulting product was not any more salty
@@KevinJDildonik I am now only going to use salted butter just to spite you.
My parents (Japanese) typically use kikkoman, but like special soy sauces for sashimi or sushi. Relatively recently, we've been a able to get dashi-soy sauce, which our whole family loves. It's got more dashi flavour and isn't so salty, and goes so well with sushi and sashimi. You can also make shoyu-koji by fermenting shoyu with koji yourself, and it imparts a beautiful sweet-umami, rounded and very complex flavour.
Sounds rubbish...
I use soy from the teets of the soyboy...
@@zoot4358 bahaha, yeah we all know no soy sauce is ever going to be as good as straight from the soy boy! But mortals can try
Which Kikkoman flavor do you guys use? Just the regular one?
What brand is the dashi soy sauce you're referring to
@@anonymoose2474 regular
Great video! Some observations: 1. Most Asian recipes call for (a little bit of) salt in addition to the soy sauce; westerners have somehow gotten into their heads that soy sauce is used in place of salt. That’s probably why the La Choy (and to a lesser extent the Kikkoman, since it’s brewed here) are saltier. (Imported Kikkoman is less salty than the domestic stuff.) 2. Kikkoman is just a much better soy sauce than people think it is. It’s the daily driver even for a lot of Japanese people. We’re really lucky to have a traditionally brewed soy sauce made in the US that’s available basically everywhere. 3. Thai soy sauces are much milder because they tend to be used in combination with fish sauce and often oyster sauce. 4. Didn’t see one in the video, but for dipping and sauces I highly recommend a Japanese double fermented saishikomi. They make a regular batch of the (koikuchi) shoyu, then brew another one, replacing the brine with the first batch. So you get extra savoriness and flavor without extra salt. It’s really lovely. 5. Which reminds me, the “light” shoyu (usukuchi) is probably best avoided unless a recipe specifically calls for it. I find it pretty harsh. Fortunately, almost all the shoyu we get in the US is the “dark” (koikuchi), which isn’t any darker than Chinese/Korean/Thai “light” soy sauce.
Westerners might have been omitting salt because of Western medical advice telling them to eat less salt, too.
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 Exactly that imho as well, since salt is perceived as "an enemy" to be avoided. Meanwhile, China and Japan have high rates of stomach cancers for a reason.
for some brands they're over salted almost to the point of how the hell can you eat that. Thats probably where thats from esp when its the cheap shit, buy mid range stuff and that goes away I find at least with NA stuff, then yeah I salt. You're 100% correct though glutamates do not equal salt
@@SterbenCyrodill last I checked salt doesn't give you cancer lol (otherwise Europe would be in a LOT of trouble). Could be the nukes that were dropped... or maybe the use of some gnarly toxic chemicals that are weirdly allowed for consumption, as for China... eh maybe dont eat stuff from there - due to being uber poor they tend to get real desperate and do all kinds of werid things to produce and meat - like filling their animals full of anti-biotics so they gain water weight and so on.
I feel like Ethan kind of only scratched the surface here and didn't really dive too deep like he's done in similar past videos. Even the tests weren't that great. Multiple dashi with different soy sauces would've been interesting to try for instance.
Fear not the man who has 1,000 soy sauces. Fear the man who use 1 soy sauce 1,000 times.
Fear more the man who has used 1000 soy sauces 1000 times
I was hoping I'd find a comment like this - am not dissapointed
The hater of my least favorite soy sauce is my friend.
- Sun *sip sip sip sip* Oooh
@@richmondvand147 Wow this really blew up lol
You're famous!@@jiraphat2200
Currently in the gym, listened to Adrian Von ziegler and RUclips decided that "In this video were doing a deep dive into the world of soy sauce." is what I needed for my next set
Southeast Asian married to an East Asian and living in the US here. We always try to cook dishes from our home country that’s not easy to get here in the US. I've got a wide variety of soy sauces in my kitchen, each with its own specific use - stir fry, dipping, sauce, porridge, soup, you name it. It's crucial to know when to use each type; it's not just about the taste. For instance, Kecap Manis is completely different from the rest, it’s specific to South East Asian dishes and will completely ruin the taste if you use it for sushi.
Thanks for the great content! It's really informative, and I can imagine the effort behind it. ❤️
So what your saying is I should go with japanese Korean & a chinese soy sauce? lol
@@MRSketch09actually yes, especially if you are following a recipe, the difference in salt could really affect the dish. It's not too different from having to stock different vinegars which vary in intensity
@@MRSketch09 TL;DR: yup, at least to make typical/popular recipes that use soy sauces.
actually depends, if you want to make a chinese-style fried rice then yes, but if you want malay/indonesian-style ones which is predominantly sweeter, you cannot use east asian sauces to make it. That being said, a lot of popular recipes would use non-sweet soy sauce and they tend to pair better with east asian soy sauces rather than the sweet south east asian ones. If you decide to try kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) try cooking “Ayam Kecap”, this will not work with just non-sweet soy sauce and sugar!
I haven't really tried the combination on my own, but with kecap manis, I reckon you can combine soy sauce and brown sugar, and just omit the salt salt in the recipe. However, physically, kecap manis is very thick, closer to molasses, so you may need to do some reduction. Although the end result may not be comparable to kecap manis. But as an alternative it "should" work
@@MRSketch09 as a south east Asian in asia, yes, eat one does a different thing to us. What Ethan says is true, there is no one best soy sauce for anything. The soy sauce I use for my chicken rice is not the same as the one i used for my fried rice. You can but it doesn't taste the same as what we are used to. There is no such thing as bad soy suace
Ethan, I’m a huge home cook and I use soy sauce a LOT. This video was incredibly informative and I truly appreciate the level of effort and research put into it. Just wanted to say thank you, your content is awesome.
Awesome! Thank you!
Tdlr?
"I'm a huge home cook" sounds really funny
I bought three very different shoyu (Japanese soy sauces) from a company online called Japanese Taste. They're in Tokyo, I believe. These were a Christmas gift for my wife, who is a fabulous cook. Anyways, all are artisanal, family-made sauces and one is the four year old you featured here. Yes, they were expensive. We use ordinary Kikkoman for cooking. But these very special shoyu have very complex flavors and aromas, each different from the others, and are terrific for drizzling over sushi or rice. Used sparingly, the high price doesn't matter. And we like that we are supporting small family businesses keep age-old traditions alive. Great video, Ethan!
Great share Paul, which one was your favorite and why if you don't mind me asking?
if i had to guess, yamaroku shoyu was one of his favorites 😊
I love that after the variety of experiments you conducted and the research you did, the eventual answer you found to the thesis question “which soy sauce is better and why” ended up being: “?????????” Always love your videos.
I feel like I'm done watching his comparisons.
He should do a strictly blind test to begin with to get his assessments and *then* do a brand by brand assessment. He's poisoning the well from the outset by knowing the brands/prices/etc.
I went to a Tequila distillery in Mexico one time, and the first thing the tour guide asked us was... "what is the best tequila in the world?" and a bunch of people yelled out a bunch of expensive brands... but the guide simply said, "it's the one you like." - it rings true with everything... Ethan can't tell you which one you'll like, you have to experiment just like he suggested at the end.
This was always going to be the answer
Surprised that the cheap shit (La Choy) was a viable choice all the way through.
Exactly, a worthless video.
A Japanese acquaintance once gifted me a bottle of soy sauce from Yuasa, the birthplace of soy sauce in Japan. Nothing wrong with Kikkoman, it is a decent soy sauce, but just try a drop of Kikkoman versus a drop of Yuasa... Amazing. Over the last fifteen years, I have imported bottles a couple of times, for myself and as gifts. If you ever get the chance, to grab a bottle: don't hesitate!
Kikkoman sucks
@@shawnthomas7404 you know a better one?
@shawnthomas7404 eh, it's fine. It's the bud light of shoyu.
got a link as example? i cant decide which yuasa soysauce
What brand do you recommend?
If you like sea food there’s a specific type of Chinese soy sauce, which is called “steamed fish soy sauce,” that works so well with all kinds of simply or lightly cooked fish and shellfish. A simple dish: Place fish on a plate and pour the sauce around it, steam it with shredded ginger and other aromatic herbs you like. After it’s cooked add a layer of chopped scallions/green onions on top of the fish and quickly pour boiling hot oil over to bring out the aroma.
Great video doing a deep dive on this topic. As a Thai, I have all main types of Thai soy sauces at home, plus Japanese and Korean soy sauces to use when I cook their recipes.
I wanted to share all the 4 types of Thai soy sauce here. (The cap colors are standardized across all Thai brands.)
1. Thin soy sauce (white cap): Basic soy sauce. Milder taste. All purpose cooking (usually used alongside seasoning soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce)
2. Thin seasoning soy sauce (yellow cap): Is the white cap+some added seasoning ingredients. slightly saltier and more umami than the white caps. Used for all purpose cooking, dipping, or quick splash onto cooked food such as fried eggs and congee.
3. Seasoning soy sauce (green cap): Is the chemical processed soy sauce+added seasoning ingredients. Saltiest among all 4. Great for marinating and all purpose cooking.
4. Black soy sauce / sweet soy sauce: Deep color with sweetness and saltiness, umami flavor. Used for color and for adding sweetness to some savory dishes such as Pad See Yew, Pad Krapow, and Thai dry noodles. Also used for making dipping sauces for crispy pork belly and Chicken rice sauce.
And you're right that it could probably used in baking. The brand once went viral for their ice cream pop-up shop, where they put this sauce on top of vanilla soft serve ice cream (it tastes unbelievably good!)
Thank you. I've often wondered why so many and how you use them.
Is the cap color for black soy sauce black?
ye, you forgot to mention the cap color of kecap manis
Thank you for sharing brother. 🙏
Yellow cap ftw It is truly the best
I absolutely love that you made this video. I’m from Hawaii and we use (in our household) multiple different soy sauces because of the reasons you just made. Each soy sauce has its place in the kitchen depending on what you’re making and what you’re trying to accomplish. And unless you’re familiar with different soy sauces you’re really missing out on different flavor profiles.
I am addicted to aloha soyu and its so hard to find in the states but its the best soyu I've ever tried
@@sketchmastertask3093 I grew up with that being our everyday shoyu and it’s still my go-to. I’ve been finding them at Asian markets near me. Maybe try one and see if they have it there?
Thank you so much in sharing your truth. Was raised on Oahu until I was married 53yrs ago. I totally agree with you. I wish I could get back and purchase my favorite’s again but it is not possible for me to come back home again until my funeral so no hope. So sad. Please enjoy your favorite’s for me. Would love to know what your favorite’s are. Blessings to You. 🙏♥️
What if I use one and alter it with sugars etc? I use soy only varieties like Tamari. What are your favorites and uses for them? I'm very curious.
100%! I keep at least 4 different kinds of soy sauce.
Ethan, next time, I strongly suggest you interview home-cooks from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thai, et al. You will discover that each type of soy sauce has its purpose and it’s common to find a wide variety of different soy sauce in the same kitchen. They will be able to explain when a particular soy sauce is used, and for which dishes. ❤
Sometimes it depends on what you're using it for. We often use Golden Mountain for finishing, Maggi for dipping, and Lee Kum Kee for cooking.
I only use Lee Kum Kee when I'm cooking, I love it so much
Yeah lee kum kee dark is just the best for cooking with
Maggi does have a distinct taste. However, Maggi is not soy sauce because it is made from hydrolyzed wheat protein and additives, while soy sauce contains soybeans. Believe it or not, Switzerland is where MAGGI originates,
You pretty much got it right, Maggi & Golden Mountain are “finishing/dipping sauces” that can be used straight out of the bottle. Where as Soy sauce is for cooking, and to make it into a dipping sauce you’d need to mix it with a few things.
Interesting
18:02 "Soyces" Somebody has been saying soy too much 😂😂
laughed out loud, thanks for pointing it out I didn't realise.
Also 7:14 "transfoym"
I caught that too. I laughed pretty good
33:51 confusing "Soy sauce" for "Episode"
Yeah he's been saying it too much
i think he has a speech impediment, he mispronounces things left and right. "susi" "shasimi" either that or he is just a little dumb.
Living in Thailand and cooking for my family, this is how i do it;
Thai soy sauce for cooking.
Kikoman for dipping.
Chinese sour soy sauce for dumplings.
As an Indonesian, seeing Bango was wild. We use them pretty much daily and use it for a lot of things, from fried rice to dipping sauces. What I personally do is usually mix chilli sauce / sambal with the soy sauce.
It even works well with just plain white rice (a classic broke college delicacy XD)
I ALWAYS put chili oil in my soy sauce. Gotta have that heat!!
but it wasnt used. it's kinda important in there though because I think it was such an oddity since most soy sauce is salty and sour. so sweet soy sauce was really a specific specimen.
Yes, here in Malaysia my kids discovered Bango from our previous live-in home helper who brought a stash of Bango from her town in Java. I also enjoyed the old ABC kicap which has now been taken over by Heinz. There's also numerous variations of locally brewed kicap masin and kicap manis here in Malaysia. Southeast Asia is truly the melting pot for numerous Asian cuisine.
Hi Ethan, I'm indonesian and I'd say the Bango brand is Kecap Manis- different from most soy sauces in the video because it is intended to be sweet.
It's made with black soybeans to start, fermented similarly to other soy sauces (probably most similar to ones of SE Asia or southern China origin), and then mixed with palm sugar. It is used as the main flavoring for Indonesian-style Fried Rice (Nasi Goreng), braises (Semur), and sauce for skewers (Sate/Satay). Also, famous struggle meals here are white rice with kecap manis and rice crackers (Kerupuk) with kecap manis lol
We also have salty soy sauce (Kecap Asin), we use less of it than the sweet type, and we cook with it similarly to the other sauces in the video. My favourite use of it is in the broth for Fujian/Hokkien noodles (Bakmi).
All said, SE Asia food is as diverse as the people, so you're very welcome to explore! There's definitely something for everyone. Great video as always!
I'm Chinese so we have our own fair share of soy sauces but the indonesian sweet soy sauce is so addicting!
What's the ratio of soy sauce and palm sugar in Kecap Manis?
Do you know what brand of soy sauce they pack in indome mi goreng noodles please?
@@some1156 likely proprietary, but Indomie is produced by Indofood who has their own kecap manis brand so you can try it if you can find it
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 when I checked the label, it's around 8g/15mL which means it's half sugar by weight lol, it's soy mash flavored brown sugar syrup basically
Love how good you are with citing your sources. I wish every channel I watch did this.
The hydrolized style of soy sauce is what Maggi is. The Swiss developed that process, the French took it with them and introduced it to Vietnam, which is why it gets used there, since it is such a different taste from genuine local soy sauces.
Very interesting, I'm Vietnamese and I wondered why in our fried rice, we tend to use Maggi over other soy sauces.
Arome Maggi? I would never call that soy sauce honestly. It's a whole different product!
@@FutureCommentary1Europeans don't call it soy sauce either, Maggi is Maggi
@@FutureCommentary1 Though it's not soy sauce anymore, nowadays they use 100% wheat as far as I know
@Commentary1 Yep, Vietnamese here and Maggi is Maggi. Not a soy sauce sub, it's its own thing.
Hello Ethan, I wanted to share some insights on the Chinese style of soy sauce, which comes in various types, each suited for different culinary applications.
普通酱油 (Ordinary Soy Sauce) is a type that sits between 生抽 (Light Soy Sauce) and 老抽 (Dark Soy Sauce) in terms of characteristics. It has a darker color, more intense flavor, and a slightly bitter and saltier taste. It requires longer heating to develop a rich, soy aroma, so it's best not to add it right before the dish is finished cooking.
The production techniques for soy sauce vary slightly between the northern and southern regions of China. In the colder northern areas, "solid-state fermentation" is more common, while the warmer and more humid conditions of the south favor "liquid-state fermentation."
The first extraction of soy sauce is called 头抽油 (First Extract Soy Sauce), followed by 二抽油 (Second Extract) and 三抽油 (Third Extract) for the subsequent fermentations.
生抽 (Light Soy Sauce), made from a blend of the first, second, and third extracts, is ideal for enhancing the umami flavor and for use in cold dishes.
Notably, 头抽酱油 (First Extract Soy Sauce) contains the highest amount of umami substances, making light soy sauce with a higher proportion of first extract of superior quality.
"味极鲜" is another type of light soy sauce, which includes flavor enhancers to make its taste even more prominent and richer. It can be used as a substitute for MSG or chicken essence to enhance the flavor and texture of dishes.
老抽 (Dark Soy Sauce) is made by further processing and concentrating these extracts. It is darker in color, richer in flavor, more viscous, and saltier. Its primary use is for coloring dishes, such as in braised meats, marinated dishes, and stews, sometimes with added caramel color to deepen the shade even further.
蒸鱼豉油 (Steamed Fish Soy Sauce) is also a type of soy sauce, made from soybeans. It is designed to enhance the flavor of dishes, often including sweeteners to balance its salty taste, making it particularly suitable for seafood.
While there are many more types of soy sauce, these are some of the basics that can significantly influence the outcome of your cooking. Each type has its unique purpose and can elevate your dishes in different ways.
BTW 金蘭 which you used in the video for fried rice is ok. I used to work in a Chinese restaurant and the Sifu always used a big mysterious plastic can without any label on it. I think that is the mixture of soy sauce or something but that special sauce for fried rice is GOAT
This is so neutrally written and detailed that I thought I was reading a ChatGPT response
Love it! It really is crazy how much variation there is when it comes to the production process in a single country's soy sauce varieties, let alone across different countries.
I would have loved to get even more granular in this video and thought of about 100 more tests I could have done haha. For example, some day if I get a test kitchen with lots of willing taste testers, I'd love to revist the fried rice test with even more variations and also different types (vegetable fried rice, shrimp fried rice, chicken, etc.)
TLDR
@@RealMisterDoge I typed most of the part in Chinese and like a small proportion in English then I asked GPT to translate it for me cuz it is very hard to translate some of the Chinese terms in English, especially in the field that I'm not that familiar about
This is the first cooking channel I've come across that acknowledges the human element in food tasting as well as the science and history. Instant subscribe.
FYI the Korean soup soy sauce exists bc it’s used to flavor lighter soups without altering the color too much.
These in depth deep dive videos you’ve been doing have replaced any of my Netflix watching time. Seriously amazing
Great video but maybe a slip of the tongue at 10:15 when we learn that a japanese tamari and a korean soy sauce is made with NO SOY BEANS at all :p Of course it's no WHEAT as it says in the text on the screen :)
I always use Kikkoman, and so do my parents, and so did my grandparents.
Its become a very nostalgic and familiar flavor for me, to the point where other soy sauces just don't taste quite right.
Yeah, I'm the same... I stick to Kikkoman too, and probably always will. ;-) It's just so familiar and comfy to me.
I used to use kikoman and it was so salty, even the low sodium ones. Once I started going to the asian markets and getting other asian soy sauces, I can't ever have kikoman ever again.
I usually do use Kikkoman, but I do have a bottle of that mizu barrel-aged soy sauce that I sometimes break out when I want something more than just saltiness. It's less salty and sweeter so I usually have to add salt when I use unlike with the kikkoman, but it's a much more complex flavor. It all depends on how much of a spotlight you want on the soy sauce or whether it should just be background character in the food.
@@johannawebley4101 Kikkoman is Japanese brand though, but I get what you meant
@@way9883 I know, but other varieties are much better. I feel like people go for it cuz it's the known name, like Tabasco for hot sauce but there are so many other better hot sauces out there.
Being married to a Thai women I have learned so much about sauces. Using a Chinese or Japanese soy sauce in a Thai dish changes the flavors substantially. These cultures have cultivated these sauces to work with there cuisines. This really opened my mind and learned to appreciate where ingredients come from.
As a thai, i cant agree more. The fat kid brand light soy sauce has that distinct flavour no other brand has! Not saying that one is better than others. They are all just distinctive.
@@zoelin83 LOL i call it fat boy brand too! its healthy boy but i can swear it use to be fat boy or its the mandela effect xD its my favorite brand, specifically the mushroom one made with shiitakes
@@colbicolbiWTF Recently new brands were launched, some worth trying but the fat boy light soy sauce is irreplaceble! It's healthy boy indeed but from the logo, that boy doesnt seem too healthy. Haha
Thai black soy sauce is also called sweet soy sauce in thailand. It's usually eaten with hainanese chicken rice. Thai people mostly use sweet soy mostly for sweetness and color rather than salty and umami flavor. Salty and umami soy sauces in thailand are not that dark in color. When making fried rice most places would put both thin soy and dark soy for color.
Kecap manis bango, or bango brand sweet soy sauce, is in fact, an entirely different kind of soy sauce originated from central java region.
As an Indonesian, we use it as entirely different sauce, only some times mixed together with soy sauce for cooking. We call soy sauce "kecap asin", and sweet soy sauce "kecap manis".
We do not use it for baking. Though it is sweet, it's still considered as savory sauce.
also to add, kecap use black soybean combined with palm sugar instead of yellow soybean like other soy sauce.
It’s more often used to cook fried rice. Imagine if it’s being used in baking :)
Maybe you _should_ also bake with it.
@@yuyutubee8435 no.
Kecap is the stuff that comes in a little packet with Mi Goreng noodles, isn't it? I'd heard (westerner here) that it was a local variation on Ketchup, or perhaps the origin of ketchup that sailors tried to replicate when they arrived home.
Indonesian sweet soy sauce, or kecap manis, is a staple of Indonesian cuisine. Kecap manis is a common ingredient in grilling and stir-frying. Kecap manis is rarely used for soups during the cooking process, though people might add it later as a condiment on the dinner table. Kecap Manis is also used side by side with its counterpart, Sambal sauce, and mixed both for sweetness and spicyness.
It's also where the English language gets "ketchup" from (kecap) and over time they transformed the more fish/soy based sauce into the modern tomato ketchup.
Ketjap manis is especially good in stews when combined with ginger. It's heavenly. But then again, that's why Indonesian cuisine is top of the world.
My parents were Dutch and we always had a bottle of Ketjap Manis in the house. My dad rubbed it on steaks before the BBQ.
@@debilthomes501 That's smart indeed, ketjap manis and sambal is the perfect marinade for a lot of meat.
I find it incredibly difficult to source good Indonesian soy sauce in the US. You always see ABC brand, but the flavor is quite unattractive to me. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I can find Conimex (technically Dutch instead of Indonesian). It has a very distinct and well-balanced flavor. Doesn't work as a substitute for Chinese or Japanese soy sauces, of course. But in Indonesian dishes it works so incredibly well. Highly recommended if you can get your hands on it. Of course, if you are in Europe, it's often super easy to find. So, there's that.
Ethan dives deep. As usual. Bravo.
Hey, Ethan, I also wanna add that in a lot of Chinese and Japanese cooking, soy sauce is not always gonna be used by itself as an application. If you really wanna get good soy sauce, you gotta cook and season it. A lot of times, soy sauce that's used as a condiment to pour over or used to dip, like Cantonese steamed fish and cheung fun, is often a blend that's made in house or seasoned and cooked with aromatics, such as ginger, garlic, and/or scallions, and a bit of sugar or vinegar. Same with gyoza dipping sauce, stir fry some garlic and ginger and some vinegar. I definitely recommend Lucas Sin's videos on Cantonese steamed eggs and fried egg over rice as an example.
Yeah when he starting dipping I was like 🤨
I personally love to mix light and dark soy sauce in 1:1 ratio with garlic, spring onion, ginger, coriander roots, coriander seeds and a chunk of vietnamese cinnamon. I then add a bit of water and heat it over low flame for 1-2h until it becomes thick and velvety. The resulting sauce is just wonderful for dumplings after straining. It imparts so many dark, earthy flavors it's simply unbelievable
I like to use Thai Golden Mountain sauce as a base and mix in various flavor enhancers to create an "umami sauce." Golden Mountain sauce already has Disodium-5 Inosinate and Disodium-5 Guanylate, which enhance the umami taste reception of Glutamate, which I add using MSG. You can do the same with plain soy sauce as a base. Soy sauce already has a lot of amino acids, but you could also add other flavorings to soy sauce to provide any extra enhancement: yeast extract, mushroom extract, bouillon paste, miso paste, tomato paste, liquid smoke, caramelized sugar, etc. They all combine to concentrate and optimize (according to your own taste) that savory experience (umami, but also kokumi and other taste reception involving browning and caramelization)
Try adding black garlic to your mix if you haven't already. The taste profile is very different from normal garlic and adds a great umami depth to dishes.
Lee Kum Kee is the best soy sauce for anything with little sweet and full flavor. Kikkoman is so so and American love it. We use Golden Mountain soy sauce for general cooking only.
Lee Kum Kee is my go to for any Asian sauce. But I am a big fan of San J Tamari. Gold label is the best but Silver label is passable.
I distill my own whiskey and age it in small 1 or 2L oak barrels. Sometimes i put soy sauce or balsamic in the old whiskey barrels and let it oak for a few months. It can make some interesting flavor profiles. The small barrels have a high surface area to fluid volume so it doesn't take long to get some interesting flavors.
I’ve been loving your deep dives into specific ingredients. I’m super excited to watch this
What crime did you commit to be forced to taste La Choy? I obviously have a Japanese bias, but it’s due to purchasing and taste testing as many as I could try. The Japanese are just the most complicated and delicious. I would love to try the coconut profile too. But for me it’s about which shoyu to use. I like white shoyu for sashimi, cooking fish and chicken dishes. I love the whiskey barrel aged for beef. I love the Sakura shoyu for vegetable. I love the aged ones for pork and beef. I think it’s about which shoyu the dish calls for, not which is objectively the best.
La Choy is just not very good. There are plenty of great Chinese soy sauces but La Choy is bottom of the barrel.
@@CharliMorganMusic thank you!
The Bango sauce is from Indonesia and called kakap manis, manis literally means sweet. It is specifically meant to be used in fried rice/noodles and satay sauces.
We've got a bottle of sweet soy at home that I'll often use as a quick substitution for teriyaki or that kind of flavoring. Sweet glaze basically, or a sweet addition to rice, etc. Very different stuff from regular soy or tamari - kind of surprised it was on the list at all
kecap not kakap brother, kecap is ketchup and kakap is snapper. And its really sweet so we don't use it on it own. We sometimes use it with onion, cilantro, pepper, chili, and so many other alternative to balance the taste. So if you sipping it on its own i agree that what you can taste is sweet (in my childhood sometimes i like to poke the sauce and take it strait to my mouth XD)
I grew up on fried egg and kecap manis. Shit is bomb.
Your former coloniser here. I'd like to thank you for the ketjap manis, ketjap asin, kroepoek, all the sambals, atjar tjampoer, babi pangang, sate, satesaus, rendang, and that mixture of cocos and peanuts, what's it calked again?
Oh, and spekkoek of course!!
@@fukpoeslaw3613 I thought spekkoek is brought by Dutch
I've watched like three of your videos now and I'm truly blown away by the level of effort and content you're able to fit into these videos. You've earned my subscription. I look forward to seeing more of your content.
Wait till you understand you learned nothing and his videos are just full of questions on which he takes 10 mins to answer and fills them up with irrelevant information to make you feel like he said something smart.
The amount of effort that must go into these videos blows my mind
Ginger+blindfold+camera= mind blown....jk enjoyed
I use Chinese (light and dark) for fried rice and for stir-frying, Korean for other kind of recipes likes sauces since that’s what I can get in bulk at Costco, and Japanese for sushi.
That's quite an arsenal! Are you Asian / do you use these sauces most of the time? It would take me a very, very long time to go through that many bottles (I'm European). Although I guess they keep forever anyway...
@@pierrex3226 Not Asian, but I cook a lot with soy sauce, even in non-Asian dishes. Brings more depth than just salt.
@10:21 he says that Tamari is made from virtually no soybeans. I was always under the impression that it was made "of" mostly soybeans.
A knit pick was that he also says sodium carbonate is the same thing as baking soda. I'm not sure which is the compound that is added to neutralize the chemically hydrolyzed soy product but those are 2 different chemicals.
Yeah, doesn't seem too many people caught that. Or maybe he didn't want to say they use washing soda.
They also use sodium hydroxide to neutralize the acid, so I’d imagine they either use whatever they get that’s cheaper or just what the company has always used. Sodium hydroxide would affect the taste the least since it would just leave table salt and water instead of carbonates.
The no soybeans was just a misspeak, it's labeled on the screen as he says it and he said a few times before that it's pure soy bean
I've tried 5 or 6 soy sauces through my adulthood and no matter what I do I always go back to Kikkomans. I'm born and raised American and I think the nostalgia shines through. That being said I'll definitely be picking up some different sauces when I hit the store next
Try Yamasa brand Japanese soy sauce, as I noted in my comment. You'll never go back to Kikkoman if you compare them side by side. And, pick up some black bean paste at an Asian store, which allows boosting the fermented/umami flavor without overdosing on salt.
@@olenfersoi8887 will do
I grew up on Kikkoman, but was never a huge fan except for sushi. I tried the Japanese Kikkoman a few years back from Ranch 99 and found something I loved. It is slightly salty but the flavors are so complex compared to some others I have tried. As noted in other comments, Aloha Hawaiian soy sauce is tasty for cooking with.
Another type of shoyo you could try is Aloha shoyu. My mom's family is from Hawaii and I grew up always using Aloha shoyu since it was what she grew up with since it was founded in Hawaii by five Japanese families back in like the 60s. I like the more sweet flavor to it compared to very salty like La Choy might be considered.
🤣 As soon as I saw the name of the video, I scoured that screenshot to see if Aloha Shoyu was represented and went 😭. Hahaha. I'd argue it's a little saltier, which is why I love it. But glad to see someone else pulling for it too! 😆🥰🌺
I grew up with Kikkoman's, and hated it. Then I was assigned to Pearl Harbor, and some friends said I had to try Aloha shoyu. I was immediately hooked! I couldn't get enough of it.
Unfortunately, now where I live in the mid-west it's not available. So I've settled on any of a variety of Filipino soy sauces.
Yep! 100% agree with you! This is the absolute best Shoyu. My parents moved to the Big Island many years ago and became great friends with their native neighbors who introduced them to actual home-made soy sauce (Aloha Shoyu was the store-match). The entire reason I watched this video was because I was hoping he would 'find' this magical Hawaiian soy sauce. It's the best! In my opinion.
Liquid aminos has a very close taste to Aloha…at least the one I get does.
18:00 “Soyces” I’m using that from now on. Soy Sauce takes too long to say, so I’m saying “Soyces” now. Haha I don’t know if that was a mistake or not, but I like it!
"Some soyces" 😂 18:02
Glad someone else caught that 😅 had to rewind it to make sure I wasn't crazy
He does things like this a lot because he reads off a script to create the voice over.
Sometimes he'll even say things that are clearly a written typo. It's pretty funny.
@@anishannayya1Yeah, there's quite a few minor flubs like this thru the video. It's cute, not a problem.
@@anishannayya1 I don't think that's a typo. I think it's just saying the word soy sauce 1000 times in a week and then your brain merging the words.
Also "transfoym" 7:15 😂
Your videos are always top notch; full of information and presented so nicely, thanks for these consistently amazing videos.
Miso master brand tamari is the best…it’s a byproduct of miso production. It’s more expensive than the regular stuff, but certainly not the most expensive product out there.
Fantastic video- I will have to revisit to retain so much great information. Just after watching this, I went to my pantry where I do have 3 different varieties of soy sauce, did a taste test and was floored by the differences in taste, and when I examined the sodium levels/carbs, etc. it really hit home everything you've said here. Thank you for a great video, Ethan!
I'm pumped for this video, because I'm currently brewing my own soy sauce. It's almost done, and I can't wait to try it. Greetings from Germany.
Where in Germany? I will come visit. 😊
Let me add my two cents here.
Brazil has the largest Japanese origin population outside Japan and also has a large Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean population.
Soy sauce in Brazil has maize as the fourth main ingredients, creating a very unique flavor that is not available in traditional soy sauce.
This created a whole population of Brazil - not of asian descent - who enjoy soy sauce, but looks for this maize taste in soy sauce.
My mother was a diehard misso fan and she made our misso herself at home, with fungi imported from Japan in disguised as bookmarks.
6:08 - While wheat does impart a mild "wheaty" flavor to beer, it isn't the primary reason for the differences in aroma and flavor between IPAs and wheat beers. It mostly comes down to the different strains of hops and yeast used for the two styles.
Also most IPAs absolutely do include wheat as part of their grain bill. I’m not sure why Ethanol states they don’t have wheat.
@@TSBeebout I'm not sure I'd say "most" IPAs contain wheat, but it isn't uncommon.
I think a few of the other comments raised some important points: the flavor profiles are influenced by the context in which they're used in their respective cuisines; also, leaving aside production quality concerns, since there's not really a generally superior flavor profile (and that you mostly don't use soy sauce on its own), your expertise in using and blending flavors matters more.
That being said, although I've tried many more special Japanese soy sauces (shoyu), I remain partial to the Chinese flavor profile. Perhaps I'm simply more acclimated to their taste or usage in sauce-making, and how they interact with the ingredients/cooking process.
For Chinese soy sauces though, I mostly buy only Taiwan or USA made from Kimlan (金蘭 / jīn lán) or Wan Ja Shan (萬家香 / wàn jiā xiāng) out of caution, and they have quite a few of their own special brews to choose from as well.
As a final note, I don't usually do this, but the pronunciation of "jiang" (醬） is rather unrecognizable. The "a" is closer to an open front unrounded vowel, and should have a downward inflection. It's also kind of awkward to put words like these which don't really have grammatical number distinctions into an English context; probably best to treat them as their own plural forms instead of adding -s/-es.
As a home cook and a guy who works in a kitchen professionally, I think kikkoman is the best all purpose soy sauce due to flavor profile and simplicity of ingredients. Having only 5 ingredients, being water, soybeans, wheat, salt, that bacteria that makes them ferment as ingredients is very simple and avoids a lot of chemical stuff, which matters to me. The flavor profile is also less salty than la choy. Unless you're going for something specific where kikkoman isn't appropriate, I think it is an excellent choice.
You don't have it in your shootout here, and it's $7.50 a bottle, but the very finest soy sauce you can get is Kimlan Super Special Soy Sauce.
Just watch it in the bottle as you tilt it back and forth; it stains almost like dark soy sauce does and it lingers on the glass. It's brewed with licorice root for depth of flavor. It's very smooth on the palate with none of that medicinal shock you get from the soy sauce you grew up with.
Try one bottle and you'll never go back.
That is my go-to everyday soy sauce. It's very nice. I also have the $41 one in the thumbnail. It's less salty but with a very rich umami flavor. I reserve that one for sushi/sashimi.
The quantity and quality of your work Ethan just... Hats off 👏👏👏
Literally kills it every time!
The main thing is that different soy sauces are used in different ways! In Chinese cooking, usually there are three types of soy sauce you use regularly. A light soy sauce 生抽 (seasoning while cooking), dark soy sauce 老抽 (mostly for colour) and a finishing soy sauce 生酱油 usually added on some dishes (such as steamed dishes) or dipping sauces
Ethan, you're the only man on RUclips that can do the almost impossible: a deep-dive into rice. It would likely be an hour long video, but I would watch the hell out of it.
I brewed a batch of soy sauce over covid, and it turned out great, with a slight miso and peppery taste. One thing I found interesting is that the dark color only emerges if you age it in a place where it gets sunlight (or you use caramel color if you want to cheat). If you age outside the presence of sunlight then the sauce can turn cherry red.
interesting observation. I wonder whether the cherry red sauce would stain char siu red
That's correct, soy sauce and bean paste breweries here in Malaysia age the fermenting soy beans in large earthenware pots outside the yard where the covered pots are opened up during sunny days to age and darken the fermenting soy beans. The first draw soy sauce are usually the best and is usually reserved for table pouring and dipping purposes. The minimum aging period for the fermenting beans is around three to five months.
Kikkoman's. Next question. There's a reason it's the standard for most " Chinese food " places in the US and that's because it's not some overly garish sauce trying to hard. It's fermented soy beans and sodium with a few minor additions. Nothing crazy. Just enough to make it allowed overseas for health code reasons, essentially.
You go to Panda Express? Kikkoman's in Panda Express branded packets. Go to any place with takeout? I guarantee you 9/10 times they use Kikkoman's because it's hard to dislike a salty sauce when that's what you need for most Asian food. Salty umami flavor.
BTW Soy Sauce in Cookies and Brownies is totally a thing. Any place where you can imagine a salted caramel like flavor, and it pairs very well with coffee, vanilla, and chocolate flavors.
I don't have 20 bottles of soy sauce for different recipes, but I do have six or so.
Japanese soy sauce is the only thing I'll use for sushi, light soy sauce for Chinese and Taiwanese recipes that require a little more salt, mushroom soy sauce, Golden Mountain sauce, standard soy sauce, soy paste (which has about half of the sodium), dark for color, etc.
The one thing I don't have is soy sauce labeled as low sodium. If I want that? I'll simply add some water to one of the soy sauce that I already have.
how long can you keep it after opening?
I have one that's specially blended for "steaming fish". It is really different. Restaurant would make their own in small batch by cooking their soy sauce with aromatics, but it is easier if I just buy the bottled one from the store.
The soya sauce should be added to the side of the wok instead of directly onto the rice. Doing that will wake up the soya sauce and develop better flavor, which then combines into the fried rice, giving more depth.
I picked up a bottle of Lee Kum Kee mushroom flavored dark soy sauce a few months ago, and I now use that stuff on everything. The extra umami punch from the mushroom is great.
I've become a devotee of Healthy Boy mushroom soy sauce for exactly the same reason. I normally can't stand mushrooms themselves for texture and aftertaste reasons, but the extract in this soy sauce is very different, it adds such a rich and savory OOMPH!
I just got that one but I opened it recently and it smelled really strongly of rubbing alcohol so I threw it away... was it normal ?
@@languagechefcorey the Lee Kum Kee or the Healthy Boy? I only have experience with the LKK and it doesn't smell of alcohol at all. Something must have been wrong with that bottle.
Best soy sauce that's seasoned is Kikkoman Memmi. I've used it for decades. Good for all kinds of dishes and sauces, i.e. zaru soba, tempura sauce, udon, etc. A simple dish is half an avocado, add 1 tsp sugar to pitted area and add enough Memmi to cover the sugar. Eat the avocado with some of the sauce mix.
Sweet soy (like bango) sauce uses different soybeans, it uses black soybeans, and uses palm sugar, water, and salt.
fermented for several months until the surface of the soybeans is covered with mold, this part is called koji. Then the koji is soaked in a salt solution, called moromi
THANK YOU!!!! I actually LOVE LaChoy Soy sauce, but never knew why it tasted different than other soy sauces. Good to know!!!
I'm glad you used La Choy as your example of hydrolyzed soy sauce. More folks need to know it's not the real deal -- nor are those little panda packets (Kari-Out) or W-Y ones you get at your local Chinese joint. If in doubt, look at the ingredients -- if it includes "hydrolyzed soy protein," it is not naturally fermented. Water, soybeans, salt, and wheat (sometimes) are the basis for the fermented sort; ingredient list might also include the aspergillus Koji mold as well. La Choy and its cohorts do have a place on my plate (I like them for sprinkling on plain white rice), but never in my cooking.
If you have to put soy sauce on rice, get some better rice.
I appreciate your video's! I can see the research, time, experience, editing, and cost going into them. Thanks again!
This have become my favorite series that you do. Love the content.
Well done!
I loved how you mentioned the personal biases in this.
I grew up in Japan, so to be, the Japanese style shoyu is obviously going to be superior. But I loved what you said at the end about simply mastering 'your' soy sauce, and then using other ingredients to account for that extra saltiness, color, sweetness, etc.
My gut FL
L
One thing I want to point out is that the type of soy sauce used in each dish in Korea is different. At your video, I can see two type of Korean soy sauce ,"Guk ganjangoy" (국간장) is used to make soup, so it's less salty and sweet. "Yangjo ganjang"(양조간장) is used for salads o dipping sauce, when cooking dishes such as stir-frying meat or rice, "jin ganjang" (진간장) is used.
TL;DR Any soy sauce is good, just make sure you check for it's own flavor and modify the recipe accordingly (whether it needs more sugar or water or whatever).
Which is a kind of sidestep, since there are definitely some soy sauces that can be described as "not good".
These are my favorite kind of series you do! keep it up
A couple years ago I did something similar and I really was able to narrow down and streamline my collection of sauces. For “light soy sauce” I like the imported from Japan, Kikkoman Marudaizu soy sauce. It works for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese dishes perfectly. I also like Lee Kum Kee Double Fermented if you want bolder. For “dark soy sauce” I find Dragonfly Black soy sauce to work well across all East Asian cuisines, it does the job of darkening and sweetening the dishes well. The only other “light soy sauce” I find essential is Healthy Boy Mushroom soy sauce for Thai food. There was always something off when I would make diff Thai curries or pad dishes and I finally caved and bought a bottle. Thai soy sauce has a brighter bouncier less roasty and fermented flavor. It also adds MSG, which I’m not opposed to. I even confirmed w my fave Thai restaurant that that’s the brand they use. I keep San J tamari for my GF ppl. And for SE Asian dishes that use “seasoning sauce” which is usually Maggi or Golden Mountain sauce, I use Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, which Andrea Nguyen says is practically the same flavor, and makes me feel better that it’s usually stocked in the Health Foods section of my grocery store.
This was by far the most informational video I have ever seen on soy sauce. This was fantastic!! Keep up the good work!!
At my house, we create a mix of 3 different soy sauces. Normal American Kikkoman 50%, 40% organic Japanese Kikkoman (way more complex and less salty), 10% traditional aged and smoked (great and complex but too much smoked flavor to use by itself). It tastes amazing.
I keep kikkoman and the $40 a bottle Yamaroku 4 year aged shoyu. I watched a documentary about traditional Japanese soy sauce and wanted to try a few so we bought a few bottles and tried them all and the Yamaroku won our taste test hands down. Now we keep both in our house at all times. They are both delicious but very different flavors. It was a fun experiment but we were swimming in soy sauce for months. Lol
@@styleme3375 Yamaroku is excellent. Kishibori is also excellent. We haven't had both at the same time to do a direct taste taste, so I don't have an opinion on which is better, but they're both great.
I used to use Kikkoman or Aloha, until I asked the asian store owner what he recommends. Wow, Assi soy sauce with kelp is amazing. Way more flavor than the others without the saltiness. I consider it the Worchesteshire sauce of soy sauces. Delicious. Try it.
Could you do a breakdown of different apicy sauces and where to use ghem best? Like tabasco, sriratcha and so on?
Oh yea a hot sauce video would be a good one!
@@EthanChlebowski IF you do this, please try to get hold of a swedish hotsauce called "skånsk chili", it's freaking amazing. I'd be glad to send you a bottle or two =)
No regular Philippine soy sauce? Try Silver Swan.
Yeah...I was dissapointed about that too. I love Philippino Soy sauce...its dark, rich & flavorful. It's all I use.
I dig Datu Puti!
Marca Piña!
I dig Coconut soy sauce. Golden Swan is also very premium.
@@inisipisTV or piña soysouce
We use several kinds of soysauce at home in the Philippines. 2 for cooking and the rest for dips and mixing. Gyoza, sashimi, and sushi has their own. A set of flavored ones usually for noodle dishes: garlic, spicy, or calamansi. Sometimes we mix kikoman with sugar, balsamic, or chilli. We use it for dipping sweet ham, which i like to cook with fish sauce. I think there's about 10 kinds of soy sauce in the kitchen.
Can you do a video on whether you can tell the difference between an overnight marinade and one without any wait time?
Yeah, it'd be interesting to know if there's a big benefit from overnight versus, say, an hour or two versus just seasoning the meat and cooking straight-away.
@@DrGlynnWix : Yes! I have made the mistake of marinating some meat (usually chicken) too long when using citrus juice as an ingredient the marinade and the meat turns mushy. But when marinading for Char Siu I let it marinade 2 days or even a bit longer.
The best soy sauce is the Maggi Seasoning Sauce from France. It costs $40/bottle, but tastes so good - especially on steamed fish.
Maggi Seasoning sauce also has many regional variations. My personal favorite is the version sold here in SE Asia.
This was mind blowing !
Dude should make a video about finding the best fish sauce next.
I agree. I got a bottle of fish sauce and it smells so bad not sure if it's supposed to be like that.
Hi Ethan! Im a new subscriber and I found your channel because I've been searching meal prep videos recently and your content was suggested to me. Over the last few weeks, your videos have fast become my new comfort channel and I am extremely grateful for the inspiration and information that you've provided.
I've been trying to be more intentional about my health this year and the last few weeks have been tough because I started feeling very frustrated with meal planning which can be difficult with a tight work schedule. However, the way you break down the recipes (and it also helps that our taste in food is pretty similar! I love the recipes you put out) makes it less overwhelming and overall has been crucial in helping me stay on track with my food goals.
Thank you so so much for what you do. I've been really enjoying this series that you're doing about comparing foods and specific ingredients. I can only imagine the research that goes into testing all of this and your content is improving lives. Sending lots of gratefulness from my tiny island in Asia.
11:20 So now I know why those little cheap packets of soy sauce you get from Chinese food places always tastes like chemical trash. I hate that stuff and I’ve always wondered what the hell it actually was, because even as a kid I knew it wasn’t soy sauce… lol to me it tastes like burned sugar, and has a hint of nail polish remover or something like that… gross.
those aged for years is for dipping, not for cooking.
most people cant tell the different when using them for cooking, like fried, stew, or just need the saltiness
but for plain food like boiled dumpling, the richness of aroma from aged soy sauce is very easy to impress people.
best soy sauce always come from those made by small shops that you cant even find in the supermarket in Asia.
But dont worry about it and just go ahead with brands like Kikkoman, I grew up and lived in Taiwan for over 30 yrs, in fact most of domestic people never tried those rare soy sauce from small vendors and happy with soy sauce from supermarket. not only because they are hard to get, but also the pricing is so high, even more expensive than the $40 one.
I’d love even just a short of you analyzing China Lily. I know it falls into a category of soy sauces you covered already, but it’s a staple in BC Indigenous cooking here in Canada. And we’ve had a few shortages and instances of price gouging on it in the past few years. It’s like, a thing.
I know my biases will not allow me to accurately assess…. 😅
What about Vietnamese soy sauce? I noticed that it has a slightly different taste compare to Japanese or Korean one. Also, Maggi seasoning from France or Germany taste like soy sauce too.
Lack of maggi here is a big miss. Mid-tier balsamic vinegars are also amazing in the same recipes you'd use soy or maggi in. One of my secret weapons when cooking is making red sauce with a little soy or balsamic for that extra umami layer.
@@KevinJDildonikmaggi is not soybean
@@FunctionallyLiteratePerson
He did say Soy OR Maggi.
If you want to include non-soy based sauces in a video about soy sauces such as Maggi, might as well include things like Marmite, Vegemite, worcestershire sauce and also hydrolyzed plant protein too.
@@valvenator No, they did not say OR.
I have a friend who is currently dating a woman who works in the food/restaurant industry. She is a MAJOR/SERIOUS food snob. We recently met for dinner and during the meal the conversation turned to sauces/Asian foods/Asian sauces and I remarked that when making fried rice I liked to used La Choy soy sauce. She turned to me and said "Donny, why don't you just piss on the rice? It would be cheaper and taste better". She then pontificated for the next 20 minutes on the merits of Japanese and Chinese sauces. To me, taste matters over ingredients or method of preparation and I prefer La Choy. I don't care if that makes me unworthy to associate with her foodie friends.
Wow, that woman is rude and arrogant.
Just ridiculously good content dude. Ethan is better than 99 percent of cooking content on network TV or streaming services. I've been watching for years man and I'll keep comin back!
While I have Chinese dark soy sauce, & a "sweet soy sauce". My main staple is from Japan, it's Kikkoman Umakuchi Shoyu. Which has the most "balanced" flavor.
_Umakuchi_ is the most common Japanese style of soy sauce, but its has a somewhat different flavor than Chinese light soy sauce. No wonder my late parents were pretty picky about the type of soy sauce they buy in a Chinese supermarket.
Oh please more of these! There's way, *WAY* too many Asian condiments to try to figure out. More of these videos please!
btw sweet soy sauce can be brewed too, im not sure about the bango sweet soy sauce since their taken by unilever company, but traditional sweet soy sauce are brewed along with the fermented soy paste but not with big wooden barrel, but with pot like pottery kinda like chinese ceramics, like ketjap tjap jawan in pekalongan they kinda taste like sweet and salty soy sauce combaine together, they are called ketjap sedeng (medium tasting soy sauce)
For the Indonesian soy sauce you pronounce all the letters. That "ketjap" is pronounced like the American "ketchup" and "manis" is "ma niece."
Interestingly enough, in the 14 & 1500s Indonesian ketjap was introduced to Britain and over hundreds of years of western bastardizations of it, we end up with American tomato ketchup
@@blockchiken Usual story is that it was introduced from China and Vietnam, with the word being from China (Hokkien word being transliterated as kê-tsiap,) and was referring to fish sauce, not soy sauces, but it was a while ago and there are a lot of factors to consider and whether it was fish sauce or soy sauce would be an interesting historical dive as they were, and are, both used similarly.
As soon as I saw this video me and my wife both said, "The best soy sauce depends on what you're trying to make" lol, we have like eight different bottles of soy sauce and each one has a purpose. I can't even begin to try narrow down a single use soy sauce
It's so funny to see someone talking about La Choy -
One of my favorite meals to make myself as a kid (we were poor) was white rice + butter + la choy soy sauce
So it's the taste of my childhood, though its definitely... mostly just salty haha. It's no longer carried in a lot of stores so I have to special order it. Pure nostalgia makes it one of my favs, lol.