Sauce in translation: in Asia, soy sauces are valued and cultivated much like the wines and cheeses in Europe. The ingredients and spices used to create them have purposes and functions that can augment cuisines on any side of the Pacific

Prepared Foods, Jan, 2005 by Marcia A. Wade

At age 18, Myron Becker joined the U.S. Navy and became a member of the Naval Security Group, a branch of the National Security Agency, a national communications intelligence agency. They stationed him in Kami Seya, Japan, a small seaport base about 14 miles from Yokahama. There, he was assigned to intercept Russian naval communications, but culinary espionage led him to survey secrets far more interesting.

"I became enamored with Japanese culture and spent a lot of time learning about Japanese cuisine," says Becker, who is now a professional chef and manufacturer of Japanese sauces and marinades. His position afforded him the opportunity to spend time off base, which meant many of his clandestine trips were spent hiding in the back of yakitori houses (restaurants that specialize in teriyaki-style cuisine), learning the secrets of teriyaki.

Becker recalls the flavor points in those sauces were acceptable not only to him (his adventuresome parents had exposed him to a variety of ethnic cuisines), but also to other American sailors from more conservative culinary backgrounds. "I remember guys from Kansas, Tennessee and Ohio all captivated by the flavors. The authentic flavors were not too foreign or esoteric for the American palate. They just hadn't been [exposed] ... to soy sauce and Asian marinades in the U.S.," says Becker.

In 1967, when he returned to the States, he searched supermarkets and specialty stores for Oriental sauces. "The sauces that were called teriyaki sauces in U.S. stores didn't even closely resemble what I tasted in Asia," says Becket. "In those days, what Americans knew of soy sauces was hydrolyzed vegetable protein."

I'll Shoyu

Since then, Becker has worked to redefine Asian cooking sauces for the American palate. "Clearly, Asian flavor profiles in food are much more than a trend at this point; they are a pretty established vogue," he says. However, for most people, their experience is limited to soy sauce at Americanized Chinese restaurants. Although Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese cuisines also have become more common to Americans, soy sauce has been relegated for use only within these cuisines.

In many Asian countries, soy sauces are brewed, aged and collected like fine wine. There are soy sauces for special occasions and sauces for daily use. In Japan, there are more than 2,600 soy sauce breweries, says Becker. "They distinguish themselves by fairly nuanced flavor profiles. There is a vast difference between the mass-produced and small brewery brands."

Distinctions in soy sauce brands are caused by several different variables, including the quality of the spring water, the type of vats used to age it, the length of aging, the percentage of wheat, the length the wheat has roasted and the filtering process.

In general, the two main types of natural soy sauce, shoyu and tamari, are produced through the fermentation of soybeans, water, salt and koji (Aspergillus) spores. Tamari is made from the liquid that collects atop miso, a fermented soybean paste. In the case of shoyu, the yellowish-green mold inoculates the wheat. This takes about three days to develop. "Like bakeries that each have their own sourdough yeast, each soy sauce brewery will have a proprietary koji," says Becker. It is a process similar to making beer or wine.

"It takes time to learn what the proper amount of water, soybeans, salt, temperature or humidity is, to create the best-tasting soy sauce," says Wendy Esko, a marketing assistant at a natural foods distributor and importer of traditionally made, Oriental foods.

The pH of the water source also can contribute a huge degree of differentiation. Oftentimes, soy breweries are centered on natural springs in the southern part of Japan, where limestone increases the pH. The alkaline water supply makes for sweeter water, says Becker.

Sea salt is added to the water to stop the fermentation process, and to stabilize the soy sauce. The longer a soy sauce ages, the less salty and the more expensive it will be. Electrolysis is another recently developed method by which the salt content is reduced by almost 50%, reports Esko.

Glutamic acid is produced through the fermentation process and produces a taste sensation called umami, a Japanese word for savory. There is a natural umami flavor in most foods. "A well-brewed soy sauce amplifies the flavors that are naturally occurring in proteins, vegetables or grains," explains Becker.

"Umami is a state of mind," opines Herbert Stone, president of Tragon Corp., a Redwood City, Calif.-based marketing, research and consulting firm. Stone, also the current president of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT, Chicago, Ill.), has spent the last several years working in and out of China. "You can't just sprinkle umami on a product. It's hard to know what flavoring materials are associated with umami," he says. "It really turns out to be a family of compounds that includes glutamate."

Some processes do not utilize natural fermentation but are created in a temperature-controlled incubator with certain additives to speed up the fermentation process. "A slow, traditional fermentation will yield a different sensory profile than a chemical process," informs Stone. Esko comments that naturally made, slowly fermented soy sauce has a toasty caramel flavor, which is slightly sweet, not overpoweringly salty and has a clean taste that is both complex, yet balanced.