You always say that you are a soy sauce maker. Do you really know soy sauce? We invited Zhihu Da V to teach you the correct posture of using soy sauce

Braised pork at 22: 31 on June 29, 2117

Traditional soy sauce brewing method in Wuzhen, Zhejiang. Source: vision china

Soy sauce is one of the most historic traditional seasonings in China. In its long history of development, it has evolved many classifications, such as soy sauce, soy sauce with black beans, etc., and other raw materials are made into soy sauce.

It's impossible to understand these various "soy sauces" in an article, but we can teach you how to choose the soy sauce that suits you and some skills of soy sauce collocation in the time of an article, so this time we invited Zhihu cooking master V Alison to tell us about soy sauce ~

The guests introduced

Alison

the outstanding respondents on cooking topics in Zhihu. * * * There are 7 food lovers whose answers were included in Zhihu

They worked as campus braised pork rice takeout in college and participated in the round table in Zhihu

I asked my mainland friends around me, and I heard that soy sauce used to be a commodity, and everyone went to the grain and oil store with bottles or plastic bags (maybe this is the source of "soy sauce" ...).

In fact, there are many kinds of soy sauce. Both soy sauce and soy sauce belong to soy sauce. Besides soy sauce such as soy sauce and soy sauce, there are black bean soy sauce and seafood soy sauce.

Let's talk about soy sauce and soy sauce first ~

In our impression, the taste of soy sauce has a very unique freshness and fragrance, and there is a little bouquet. The bouquet comes from the oxidation of sugar into alcohol by yeast in the anoxic environment during the fermentation process, which brings the aroma of alcohol; As for freshness, it is brought by protein amino acids in raw materials.

generally speaking, it is-"soy sauce for seasoning, soy sauce for color matching".

The soy sauce is more delicious, and the taste is thick and sticky. The flavor of soy sauce is not as heavy as that of soy sauce, and the salinity is higher than that of soy sauce, but there is no sticky feeling of soy sauce. Good soy sauce is full of fresh sweetness, and it will return to sweetness after being tasted salty.

The contrast between soy sauce and soy sauce can be seen intuitively in the picture below. The soy sauce is thick and thick, and the color is dark, while the soy sauce is low in viscosity and light in color.

I did an experiment to dip soy sauce and soy sauce with cooked vegetables and meat, and the two flavors are quite different. Without any seasoning, only blanched vegetables and meat become extremely delicious and sweet after being dipped in soy sauce. The salty taste of soy sauce is heavier than that of soy sauce, but I think soy sauce is better than soy sauce in terms of "hooking" the fresh and sweet taste of ingredients: < P > But the color of soy sauce is beautiful ~ Although I ate cooked vegetables and meat at that time, I had my own brain when I was dipped in soy sauce. The reddish brown color in the sauce color should make people have an appetite.

There is a particularly wonderful usage of soy sauce: hot rice+fried lard+a little oil residue+a few drops of soy sauce. In the era of material shortage, I came home from school with a bowl of lard bibimbap, and the mellow and sweet soy sauce was accompanied by the aroma of lard and hot rice. This is my father's fond memory of soy sauce in childhood ... Simple seasonings actually contain so much sweetness and fragrance:

I have seen a saying that soy sauce with soy sauce is used to make cold dishes, while soy sauce with soy sauce can be used by heating. I think this statement narrows the scope of use of soy sauce. When making dishes that need to keep the original flavor of ingredients, use light soy sauce, which will not change the original characteristics of ingredients too much in color and taste.

There are thousands of delicious foods in the world, and the original taste is also a kind of beauty. In spring and summer, a plate of asparagus fried with Tricholoma, I like the crispness, freshness and sweetness of green asparagus in season with the special aroma of Tricholoma. Dropping a few drops of soy sauce during the frying process will bring a completely different feeling to this simple dish. Asparagus becomes sweeter and tastier, and Tricholoma becomes more delicious ...

Soy sauce can also be used to steam fish and cook kelp. Surprisingly, it has the effect of removing fishy smell in addition to refreshing.

There have always been two sayings about braised pork: "stir-fried with sugar" and "colored with soy sauce". I think the combination of the two is the best. Two extremes have been tried: pure soy sauce coloring+taking the sweetness of rock sugar &; Pure color with sugar, the effect is not satisfactory.

The way of pure soy sauce coloring+taking the sweetness of rock sugar makes the sweetness of braised pork particularly "dead", and the sweetness does not blend with the deliciousness of meat; Braised pork with pure sugar color without soy sauce feels bright red and brown in color, but it is missing in sauce flavor.

Try the combination of sugar color and soy sauce, reduce the salt content at the same time, and switch to soy sauce, so that the braised pork is full of aroma and taste.

"Light soy sauce to taste, light soy sauce to color", my experience is to use light soy sauce when cooking vegetables or quickly stir-fried dishes; Braised in soy sauce is used with soy sauce and soy sauce. As for the ratio of the two, try it according to your own needs and preferences.

what is black bean soy sauce?

Black bean soy sauce, also known as "shadow oil", is made from black beans through koji fermentation.

The following picture is a comparison between the common soy sauce and black bean soy sauce:

Compared with the most common soy sauce, the taste of black bean soy sauce is sweet and mellow, so you might as well try using black bean soy sauce to marinate. The marinated taste is sweeter than that of soy sauce, and it can also be used to make lobster sauce (oyster). (Fresh oyster in black bean sauce: fried with fresh oyster sauce with onion, garlic, nine-story tower, black bean sauce, and some tofu can also be added below, which is very good for beer ~)

The earliest soy sauce is made by curing meat, and the meat is chopped into minced meat and then fermented, which is called "fermented". In addition, the version of soy sauce in which animal blood is added when making soy sauce is called Zhen, and the fish sauce commonly used in Southeast Asian dishes has this meaning.

Fish sauce, also known as fish soy sauce, is made by pickling and fermenting fresh fish. It originated in Fujian and Guangdong, and spread to Southeast Asia by early overseas Chinese. Fish sauce has a fishy smell, but a good fish sauce is more fresh, presents a beautiful amber color and has a long aftertaste.

Fish sauce can be used to stir-fry and steam vegetables to enhance the taste, but generally speaking, fish sauce is more used to make dipping sauce. Many compound flavors, such as satay sauce, satay sauce, dipping sauce for Vietnamese spring rolls and Vietnam, are all indispensable to fish sauce:

satay sauce

satay sauce

Thai pineapple rice is topped with less fish sauce when it is cooked.

About oyster sauce ~

Literally, we can know that the main raw material of oyster sauce is oyster, and the characteristic of oyster sauce is delicious, so my first impression of oyster sauce is its strong umami flavor.

When used as dipping sauce, oyster sauce and soy sauce paste are similar in usage, both of which are suitable for ingredients with light taste. However, oyster sauce is more often used to make dipping sauce with compound flavor. For example, oyster sauce can also be found in the above-mentioned satay sauce, while soy sauce paste is more often used as direct dipping sauce.

When oyster sauce is used for cooking, it can be matched with vegetables and fungi, such as kale in oyster sauce, lettuce in oyster sauce, mushrooms in oyster sauce and so on. Besides being paired with vegetarian dishes, oyster sauce can also be used for seasoning seafood and meat. Oyster sauce with seafood can better bring out the sweetness of seafood itself, such as oyster sauce with abalone:

The best case of matching with beef is the famous beef with oyster sauce in Cantonese cuisine:

Oyster sauce is also a good choice for marinating ingredients. The ingredients marinated with oyster sauce will have the fresh fragrance of oyster sauce, and it can also remove certain fishy smell to make the taste more delicious. It should be noted that oyster sauce is not suitable for long-term cooking. The reason is just like seafood. If it is cooked for a long time, the flavor will be discounted.

is this it?