I like to watch several Asian cooking shows, one of which features Kylie Kwong, an Australian of Chinese descent who makes Chinese food with an Aussie flair, amazingly enough. I also am quite fond of Martin Yan, of Yan Can Cook fame, if you recall that from PBS. Both of these chefs cook with authentic Chinese ingredients, and two of the ingredients they tend to use over and over again are light soy sauce and dark soy sauce.
My quest over the last few weeks was to figure out exactly what the hell dark soy sauce is. I figured light soy sauce was what I generally use anyhow (not to be confused with lower-sodium soy sauce), but it turns out I was wrong on that as well.
To this end, I went into my local Asian market and said, basically, what the heck, people?? The Asian ladies manning the store didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. They thought light soy sauce meant lower-sodium soy sauce. They were no help at all.
Finally tonight as I watched another episode of Martin Yan Quick & Easy, I saw him demonstrate the difference between light and dark soy sauce. Light soy sauce is very watery and translucent, while dark soy sauce is thick and extremely dark. It's sort of like the difference between red wine vinegar and aged balsamic vinegar, if they were made of the same thing.
But still! Where do I find these two types of soy sauce??
Where do YOU turn for all questions Asian?? I have my very own resident Asian expert, my best friend Caroline. She comes very highly qualified, as she is half Korean and goes back to Korea to visit her mother at least every couple of years. She is also fluent in Korean, something I am quite jealous of because I am only fluent in English.
I asked her, what the heck is light and dark soy sauce and where do I find them?? She told me that I'd be better off going to a gourmet store than to an Asian market because dark soy sauce tends to be a specialty item. She also suggested going on the internet to try to find some brands that sold dark soy sauce so I could look for them in my local foo-foo grocery store, which has an enormous international food department ranging from Japan to India to England to Mexico.
I took her advice and went searching on the internet. Or, as Kurt would say, I consulted the Box of Knowledge (which is what he calls the computer). I found out that Japanese soy sauce, which is what I normally buy in the form of Kikkoman brand soy sauce, is actually not quite the same as Chinese soy sauce. And don't even mention Thai soy sauce; that's a whole 'nother thing altogether, although soy sauces are all generally very similar regardless of their country of origin. You can use Japanese soy sauce in place of Chinese light soy sauce, but it isn't quite the same. And dark soy sauce is nothing like what you can generally find in the stores.
(Side note: One should never ever buy La Choy soy sauce. It isn't even soy sauce; it's actually chemically manufactured from wheat instead of brewed from soybeans. Gross. Always buy naturally brewed soy sauce. It's much yummier.)
With this newfound knowledge of all the different types of soy sauce, I made a pilgrimage to my local foo-foo grocery store, hoping that I would find the Holy Grail, as it were. I thought I had already scrutinized their soy sauce selection, so I had little hope.
I should have had more faith in our local foo-foo grocery store! This store has six shelves, each eight feet long, just of soy sauce. They have Japanese soy sauce, Chinese soy sauce, Hawaiian soy sauce, lower-sodium soy sauce, ginger-infused soy sauce -- any soy sauce you can ever imagine! Finally, on the third shelf up from the floor, I saw it, as a beam of light burst from the sky and illuminated my object of desire.
OK, not really... but it did sort of feel that way.
So here is what I found, in the light soy sauce version.
I purchased this as well as the dark soy sauce version, both for $1.69 a bottle. So now I can make authentic Chinese cuisine, and I have learned more about soy sauce than most non-Asians! More random information to crowd my head, I suppose. ;o)