The dark arts of soy
The invasion of soy products into the world’s pantries is all but complete. The only answer is to surrender to their charms.
Deep and dark and mysterious and enticing, soy is a sorcerer, an imp, a wry mischief maker who tempts and beguiles you as you stir the bubbling pot and sniff its wild aromas, wondering how this one thing, this tiny little bean, could entrance the world the way it does.
But it’s not just a bean. It’s what ancient humans did with it, made of it, how this strange thing, when fermented, became the enticer that it is, and how it came to overthrow the world’s palates, incrementally, over millennia. Until today, when even the Western kitchen shelf invariably contains soy in one product or another; whether soy sauce itself (dark or light, low sodium, thick, sweet, take your pick or order the whole lot, as I did recently).
Like all the best core ingredients, soy sauce blends well with others. Soy is never the wallflower at the disco; soy is centre stage and everyone wants to dance with her. Soy is the popular kid in class, the one with all the jokes, the kid most likely to succeed. There’s no escaping soy once you’ve met her and appreciated her charms. Like garlic, onions, lemon and parsley, soy is for life.
And all those Asian ingredients that have insinuated themselves into our kitchens, one at a time, over the past 20 years; the mirin, the miso, the rice vinegar, the fish sauce; they play second fiddle while the conductor’s eyes are nearly always on soy sauce.
No longer do we reserve soy only for when we do a wok dish or something else vaguely Asian. The soy comes out for almost every sauce for meat these days, if only to give it that added “something”, that mysterious depth that you’ve been trying to achieve in a given sauce, and after much tasting you’ve realised … of course, it needs a dash of soy, what else …
Mind you, we slipped quickly past miso two paragraphs back and miso is arguably the emperor of soy products. It’s an ancient fermented soybean paste and is coming into its own as a key staple of the world pantry. It’s earthy, even slightly fruity, complex and, again, mysterious, with a flavour that’s hard to pinpoint precisely because of that mysterious complexity at its flavour core. But a spoonful in all sorts of things and its magic does its work.
Use equal quantities of soy sauce and oil in a salad dressing; add 1 or 2 Tbsp of it to marinades for meat, chicken or fish, or mix it with honey or maple syrup to glaze meat before grilling or roasting. It doesn’t even have to be cooked; you can drizzle a little soy straight from the bottle over a prepared dish; in other words, use it purely as a condiment, as you would olive oil, salt and pepper.
It wasn’t long ago that when we thought of “cooking Chinese”, our minds would turn to oyster sauce or hoisin and little else. Did we even know the difference? And teriyaki, that’s Japanese anyway, soy with sake, ginger and sugar, while hoisin is soy with a load of other goodies from chilli and garlic to white vinegar, sesame seeds, various starches and salt. Oyster sauce, meanwhile, does indeed contain oyster, or rather caramelised oyster juices, and despite its deep colour, it does not necessarily contain soy sauce, though it can. Hoisin is sweeter than oyster.
Talking of sweet, a personal favourite is kecap manis, the Indonesian soy sauce sweetened with palm sugar and used with satay dishes. There’s also a Chinese thick, sweet soy sauce mixed with molasses, which is wildly delicious, whereas black bean sauce with its strangely chewy texture is sweet yet deeply savoury at the same time.
As for char siu, that’s actually a method of cooking pork: with a glaze of soy, honey, hoisin (so more soy), sherry and Chinese five spice.
Soy, in whatever guise, is for life and living. Surrender now. DM168
It’s earthy, even slightly fruity, complex and, again, mysterious, with a flavour that’s hard to pinpoint precisely because of that mysterious complexity at its flavour core. But a spoonful in all sorts of things and its magic does its work.