Can you recommend a Low Sodium Soy Sauce?
Here's a list of various low sodium Soy Sauces, ranked in terms of sodium content - I cannot personally recommend any of them yet as I don't use low sodium soy sauce.
I control the sodium level in our dishes by using less soy sauce - using my sodium / salt tool to dial down the salinity in our food, and using spices to compensate when necessary, but I understand that there's a place for low sodium sauces.
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Real Thai Low Sodium Dark Soy - Amazon - Sodium 270mg / 15ml
San-J Lite Tamari Soy Sauce - Amazon - Sodium 490mg / 17g
Kimlan Soy Sauce Low Sodium - Amazon - Sodium 506mg / 15ml
Yamasa Low Sodium - Amazon - Sodium 520mg / 15 ml
Kikkoman Less Sodium Soy Sauce - Amazon / Packet / Bulk - Sodium 580mg / 15 ml
Kikkoman Gluten Free Tamari Light - Amazon / Bulk - Sodium 580mg / 15 ml
LKK Soy Sauce Lite - Amazon / Small / Bulk - Sodium 600mg / 15ml
Amoy Reduced Salt Soy Sauce - Amazon - Sodium 678mg / 15ml
Wan Ja Shan Less sodium soy sauce - Amazon / Bulk - Sodium 680mg / 15ml
What soy sauce would you stock at home if you were only limited to 1, 2, 3 bottles.
If I was limited to only one bottle, I would stock a premium version of generic Traditional / Chinese style Soy Sauce. Maybe something somewhat fancy like an Aged Kimlan soy sauce - something with no preservatives. Use it fast and use it often.
The basic style sauce allows me some flexibility - I can add various ingredients to it for various types of dipping sauces, eg a little brown sugar / sake / lime juice etc.
If two bottles, I would get LKK's Premium Dark. This is the preferred combo, as many dishes do well with a touch of additional richness from the dark sauce.
If three bottles, I would suggest getting a fancy version of Japanese Koikuchi (generic Dark) soy sauce - something artisanal and made with whole soy beans. This you keep in your fridge and use as a dipping sauce. e.g. Kishibori Shoyu. Personally, I would get Kwong Cheong Thye Chicken Rice Dark Soya Sauce, as I eat a LOT of Hainanese Chicken Rice / Bak Kut Teh, and this is one of the best sauces to pair with those two dishes.
What is an unusual use for soy sauce that you use it for?
I use soy sauce to soothe kitchen burns.
Is it bad for you?
If you use too much of it, it's bad, because it has salt in it.
Some dude chugged a quart of it and went into a coma.
A lady drank a liter in under two hours and ended up on chubbyemu and went brain dead.
A Japanese lady used it to commit suicide.
Don't do that, the same way you should eat large quantities of salt. It can kill you.
Some Korean homemade soy sauce has been known to contain alfatoxins and ochratoxin A
If you can get unpasteurized soy sauce, it has pro-biotics. I haven't been able to find an unpasteurized sauce, so I eat miso instead for that. I make miso hummus which I think is good for gut health.
Most soy sauce is between 10-20% salinity though, so 1 tsp (5.9 grams) of salt is equivalent of 1-2 oz (29.5-59 ml) of soy sauce.
You can work out the salt content of soy sauce (or any sauce really) by looking at it's sodium content.
I have a calculator that you can use to calculate the salinity of soy sauce.
I find LKK's Premium dark soy sauce to be the least salty, at 196mg of sodium per 5ml, or around 9.8% salinity.
Personally, I believe that soy sauce is better than just salt from a sodium perspective, because soy sauce has other flavors as well as salt, and so it's better at seasoning your food than just salt - and so you use less soy sauce, and hence consume less salt.
What are your favorite facts about soy sauce?
One thing that I found interesting is that it's actually the descendant of an even more ancient sauce, a paste made of meat and salt and yeasts. I asked a question on /askfoodhistorians and might have a recipe for that ancient sauce.
When Buddhism became popular in China, using soy to make that sauce also became popular, and the liquid runoff was soy sauce.
It was also popularized in Japan by a monk who had trained in Eastern China, and also brought back this method of making a fermented bean paste (that then became miso). The liquid runoff is called "tamari" (pooled / collected) in Japanese.
SITE VISITS
I would like to visit Yuan's in Hong Kong - a famous soy sauce factory.
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