soy sauce

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boomchakabowwow

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my own pickle thread got me thinking..

i wonder what this crowds favorite soy sauce is.. low hanging fruit imagining this crowd favors the Japanese Shoyu or Tamari no?

what is your GENERAL use soy sauce? i damn well know you all food zealots have multiple soy sauces for different applications :D..but what is your grab and go, front of the cabinet soy sauce?
 
Depends on what I'm cooking.

My everyday soy sauce these days are Kikkoman (US) or Yamasa (Japan). For braises or as a dip I'll opt for something richer like Kimlan (Taiwan) Aged soy sauce, though it does contain a bit of sugar.

For a splurge, to use with sashimi or Hawaiian poke, I love Kishibori Shoyu—wonderful stuff, brewed in wooden barrels.

Here in NYC, Sunrise Mart, a Japanese grocery store carries about a dozen soy sauces, which makes it a great resource for testing what rocks your boat—their pricey smoked soy sauce is magic in a bottle, fine for a drizzle on anything off the grill. Chinatown are also an adventure for Chinese and SE Asian soy sauces—"light" Chinese soy sauces are much saltier than "dark". I apologies if I'm broadening the horizons a bit, but soy sauce preferences are very personal—like asking about the best cheese—my mom swears by Aloha Shoyu, brewed in Hawaii.
 
It's albacore season here, I'm going to have to try the Kishibori Shoyu. Otherwise I'm a Kikkoman and Pearl River guy.
 
Thank you for the tip, Kishibori Shoyu sounds super interesting!

Comment from Amazon:

“If you're on the fence because of the price, remember that this sauce is created in a way that no other soy sauce available to us Westerners is: using ancient practices, aging longer than anything you'll find in the grocery store, and created with care and tradition.”

I'm in!
 
Years ago my wife's Chinese secretary recommend Pearl River so I started using that brand. On my more recent trips to China I found I was usually again handed Pearl River. I have other brands and types for different needs but the others tend to see only limited use.
 
Noodle Soup said:
Years ago my wife's Chinese secretary recommend Pearl River so I started using that brand. On my more recent trips to China I found I was usually again handed Pearl River. I have other brands and types for different needs but the others tend to see only limited use.
Click to expand...

This is what I've commonly bought these past few years as well for regular/light as well as dark soy sauce
 
Tamari is good, yeah. Even the Kikkoman stuff.

Otherwise: Pearl River Bridge or Golden Boat light. Whatever Shiitake-soy is at all available. Sempyo Gukganjang* (the bottle with the bright yellow label). Sometimes, Golden Mountain. All great *cooking* soy sauces, I'll be laughing if anyone doesn't read this to the end and tries any of this on sushi.

[video=youtube;sPNtJYvC8Cw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPNtJYvC8Cw[/video] from 0:40 :) (I am not even asian but god I laughed so hard when I saw this first).

*This is to Doenjang as Tamari is to Miso.
 
My general-use soy sauce is whatever Korean brewed soy sauce is in our cupboard. Nothing super-fancy, just a normal good quality Korean soy sauce. We usually have the salty/soup kind and the lighter kind. Haven't been using much soy sauce in recent months - plenty of doenjang, and Chinese bean pastes, and miso.

Other than that, Pearl River light and dark if I want a Chinese soy sauce in particular, a very nice Taiwanese pale soy sauce by Ta-Tung (and a very industrial very cheap one also by Ta-Tung), and Indonesian kecap manis.
 
Yamasa for all purpose and kecap manis for The of dish that benefits from it
 
Ooof. I was actually afraid to catch flack for recommending a simple, cheap, and actually (by label) additive free product like pearl river :)
 
Mind regional variations ... just as with kikkoman, some export varieties seem to have preservatives, some not...

The "mushroom flavoured" types are interesting, but buyer beware, different brands differ considerably in consistency and strength...
 
For me, there are two categories of soy sauce: cooking and finishing. For finishing, the most well balanced umami that's lightly salted richly flavored soy sauce, outside of small batch home made stuff, is the Japanese Shoya.

There are several brands but I like this one with fish

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GQYXTC/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

EDIT: I didn't read the whole post before posting, good to know some of you agree with me. Sorry boom, I don't feel like climbing trees today
 
Last edited by a moderator:
A similar thread awhile ago got me to try Pearl River. I like the light and the dark. The mushroom is a bit too much. Also keep some organic around that a former gf liked.
 
panda said:
mushroom dark soy = awesome for stir fries, especially lo mein noodles and fried rice
Click to expand...

Will you recommend a brand? I tried one once and it was so muddy tasting I pitched most of the bottle. Never tried any again but I love mushrooms so a second shot is worth a try.
 
For the last few years I've been using an imported kikoman Organic soy that I get at a local Japanese market for $8. Very inexpensive. I'm going to have to to try some of the others mentioned in this thread.

Dave
 
LifeByA1000Cuts said:
(I am not even asian but god I laughed so hard when I saw this first).
Click to expand...

A little off-topic, but I disagree with their first point, about Westerners drowning their white rice in Soy sauce, while the Asians don't put anything on it. My wife is Vietnamese, and EVERYONE over there puts Soy sauce (Soya) on rice. Maybe it's a Chinese thing, rather than Asian? And I've never witnessed a Westerner drowning rice in Soy sauce, and we used to go out to Chinese restaurants pretty frequently at one place I worked, so I had lots of opportunities for observation. I'm actually not sure I've seen any Westerner other than myself put ANY Soy sauce on rice. Maybe that's a regional thing.

Personally, I don't use enough of it to really care, very much, but my wife strongly prefers lower sodium levels than the "standard" Western Soy sauces have. But she did, grudgingly, admit that Kikkoman's Low Sodium version was okay.
 
As a finishing soy sauce (as the difference was explained), I find kikkoman is at least a safe choice - and I find their "GF" tamari is actually quite decent...

@DaveInMesa I'm aware I'm on extremely thin ice here, but I got an impression over time that asians always think they speak for all asians - how often have you heard a "way they do it in asia" lecture from a chinese/vietnamese/thai... grocer or cook that exactly described how it is done in his/her country and region and said nothing about all of asia? :)

And I guess the soy sauce on rice stereotype about westerners is indirectly true regarding soy sauce drowning sushi :)
 
@TheCaptain hard to do, because I'm myself confused which brands were great and which were like cigarette butt syrup...
 
Never bought a mushroom flavoured soy sauce I liked. However, I enjoy chopping up the stems of shitake once reconstituted and adding them to soy. Refrigerate and keep for at least a month. The longer the better.
 
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