¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And I'm Mark Scarborough. And together with Bruce, we have written over three dozen cookbooks, are currently working in editorial with our latest, which will be out in the summer of 2025. But we're not going to talk about any of that. Long food career, I don't know, tens of thousands of original recipes developed and published for various Things all the way from soy protein isolates to the potato board.
Yeah. So lay the soy company,
the soy protein isolate, all that stuff. Well, we've done a lot in the 25 years of our career, but this is our podcast about that very passion. We've got a one minute. cooking tip as always, which always goes over one minute. We've got a whole segment maybe about soy sauce. You don't know how much I'm going to disagree with you. We got a whole segment about soy sauce and, um, more than you may want to know. And in fact, soy sauce is not one thing, but an entire category of things.
And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. So let's get started.
¶ Our one-minute cooking tip: Keep the lid on the pot to boil water more quickly.
Our one minute cooking tip. Want to boil water faster? Cover the pot. See under one minute.
Okay, you're right under one minute. If you don't know this, I don't even know. If you don't have a lid for a pot, then put a baking sheet over it and that now it can't be a baking sheet with a nonstick surface, but put a baking sheet over it. Over it.
Or even a piece of foil. You want to keep the heat in there, right? Because if it's evaporating and you're getting a facial, then no, that, that heat is going away rather than staying in
there. All right, let's, let's try to be cool and keep this to a minute. Okay, and get out of this real fast. Okay, before we get to the next. Before we get to the next segment of this podcast, let's say that we have a newsletter. Uh, the last one just went out, and it was all about the various kinds of tree syrups we talked about on this podcast, and where to order birch syrup and, oh, you know, all the bits. Birch syrup, and what else was in there?
Hickory syrup, and black walnut syrup, and maple syrup, peach syrup, our favorite kind of syrups. Um, you want to check all that out in our newsletter. You can do that by going to our website, cookingwithbruceatmark. com, or just bruceatmark. com. You can sign up. On the landing page, the first page, the splash pages, they used to call it, of a website, and down there you'll see a link to sign up.
Again, I can't see your sign up, nor can I capture your email, nor can, there can't be three nors, but okay, nor can the provider. I'm sure you may have Thor. What is Thor? Neither, nor, and Thor? Neither, nor, and Thor. And then what? Thor? Thor? I don't know. Anyway, um, okay, we're getting off that. Let's talk about soy sauce, because soy sauce isn't one thing, but an entire category of things.
¶ Let's talk about soy sauce. We'll focus on three basic types: Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, as well as the various subsets under those categories.
We've talked about using soy sauce instead of salt as a one minute cooking tip before. Yeah. But soy sauce is more than just a generic ingredient and it is more than just a salty thing and there's tons of different kinds of soy sauce made all over the world and they are as different from each other as olive oils are as wine is. It's crazy. Treat soy sauce the way you would treat like good olive oil. Keep it in a dark place. It will oxidize. It will go off. It doesn't last forever.
So talk about the three basic kinds of soy sauce, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. And I realized in saying this, I have hacked off all of Indonesia. I've hacked off Southeast Asia as an entire regional group. I know there are lots of places making soy sauce, and there are even some fine makers of soy sauce in North America right now, in the United States and Canada. So, yes, this is true that there are many places to make soy sauce, but we want to talk about this.
Three types, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, because they actually represent styles of soy sauce. This is like having a conversation about what kind of apples do you like. There are lots of different styles of soy sauce, but let's just say that Chinese soy sauce comes in two basic styles, light and dark. But, it does have a higher ratio of soybeans to wheat, so why don't you talk about that for a second. Well, I
want to talk about your apple metaphor for a second, because food professionals and food writers and food people on websites will argue with you that certain apples must be used for certain kinds of desserts, like this should only be a pie apple and this should only be a baking apple. Well, they're going to tell you the same kind of things as soy sauces. So depending upon the qualities of it, it will give it use.
So I'm going to stop. I just, I'm sorry. We're going to have a marital argument here. There are right apples for apple pie. You do not use a golden, delicious apple in an apple pie. A golden, delicious apple is going to dissolve in a pie. You can't use it. I mean, can you use it? Yes, you can use it. You're going to end up with runny apple pie. So I think that you're trying to be generous here, but I think I think that there are actually, uh, ways that you need to use proper ingredients.
We are cooking for professionals, and I think some of these soy sauces are better suited for some applications than others, but that doesn't mean you have to go crazy, and as we're going to talk about later, as you will discover in this episode, I, the writer, yes, Mark, like the cheap ass soy sauce.
He likes the kind of getting a little puffy. Packets at like the airport
when you get, God, don't judge me, but we'll get to that. Okay, so let's, let's go back. Okay. Chinese style.
Okay, so Chinese style, and Mark said most Chinese style soy sauces are made fermented and brewed with a higher ratio of soybeans to wheat. Yes, wheat is a key ingredient in making. Most soy sauces and
so if you have a gluten intolerance or of course, I think like you probably already know this But if you have a gluten intolerance, you should know that soy sauce is not a product You should be familiar
and what that gives you in Chinese style soy sauces is a very strong soy flavor not necessarily higher saltiness, but really strong soy flavor. My opinion about saltiness and soy sauce. And yes, some styles of Japanese soy sauce or Korean soy sauce tend to be saltier because of the way they're made. But in general, across all three of these styles, Mark mentioned, personally, I think salt is used extra hard to cover up bad quality. Oh, yes.
So the saltier, saltier soy sauces tend not to be the best. The best quality is sometimes if
it has and if not if when when as it has salty notes that always does, but those should be bright. If it tastes like seawater tastes like the ocean, it Bruce is right. It's covering up something. It's covering up an inferior product underneath. It should not that, you know, okay, so now I'm telling too much about myself. But when I was a kid and we make homemade ice cream, I could have cared less about the ice cream. I just. I ate the rock salt on the ice in the ice cream maker.
That's the only part I liked is the rock salt that was adhering to the ice in the maker. So, okay, I would eat that. And, um, you know, when you eat that, a little bit of salt on ice, it has this really bright flavor. But you know if you eat that, too much salt. Like you've over salted his stew. It can get murky tasting. That's the thing with soy sauce. It can't taste murky or it shouldn't. He says he who likes the cheapest stuff, but okay, go ahead. But
you also said there were two basic styles of Chinese so it's just, there is what is called light soy sauce. and dark soy sauce. Now, when you just look at the bottles, you may actually not be able to see a difference in the color. Sometimes the dark is a little bit darker, but usually they're very similar. What it is is flavor and texture. Light soy sauce is what you would consider to be the standard soy sauce. If you were going to go out for Chinese food, if there was
say light Chinese style
soy sauce, if you went up for Chinese food and there was soy sauce on the table, that's probably the light soy sauce. Soy sauce
it's gentler and it almost has a creaminess to it It's a it's an interesting and very gentle and moderate flavor and generally it's not too dark although Bruce is right light and dark refers to texture and in and kind of viscosity and all that kind of stuff and flavor much less than color, but In general, light soy sauce is more moderately brown in its color.
My everyday go to light soy sauce is Pearl River Bridge. It's very common in Asian markets and in Chinese markets. And I buy like the half gallon tubs of it. But I do like to keep some higher end soy sauce in the house. that I like to drizzle like on rice. Pearl River Bridge is like what I cook with, but if I want something to drizzle on a piece of fish or rice, I like Wanjia Shan. And I'm sure that J A is not pronounced Jah, but what are you going to do?
Wanjia Shan, and it says aged and it's from Taiwan. It has a gentle beany flavor. It smells like soy. It's salty, but it's bright. And as Mark said, It has almost a creamy edge to it. It's really good.
Right. And that is in contrast to the dark soy sauce and is much more assertive. It has a thicker quality to it. It's, uh, dark soy sauce is great in braises. Not so great, in my opinion, in stir fries, but better in Chinese braises, in Asian braises. Really deep, dark, umami, savory. savory flavor to it. You just have to be careful with dark soy sauce because you're not getting the mushroom soy sauce in Chinese, uh, uh, uh uh, groceries stores.
And Asian groceries, mushroom soy, is of course flavored of mushrooms. And we're not talking about that. We're talking just about dark soy
sauce. And dark soy sauce often Has a caramel coloring added to it to make it darker, and it is used actually as a coloring agent when you're cooking Chinese dishes. So sometimes a recipe will call for, you know, a tablespoon of light soy sauce and a half a teaspoon of dark. And that half a teaspoon will make that dark. dish golden and darker brown. And it's almost like what your mother used to do with kitchen bouquet, but you should tell her
shit. Thanks for insulting 1 billion Chinese.
Okay, go ahead and sing dark
soy sauce. Okay. So that's the Chinese soy sauce and the light and the dark and Bruce's favorite Taiwanese brand, the one Josh on. Aged light soy sauce versus Pearl River Bridge light and dark soy sauce. Let's move on to Korean soy sauce. Korean soy sauce is very different and it's actually made in a different way from Chinese soy sauce. Yes,
soybeans are boiled and inoculated with wild molds spores and bacteria pressed into blocks using rice straw to hold it all together. These blocks are submerged into a brine. It's really complicated. After a few months, they strain the solids out from the fermented liquid, and I find because of that rice straw in there, there is a strong vegetal flavor that you don't Find in other soy sauces,
right? And I think that what you should know here about Korean soy sauce is there are a lot of knockoffs that short circuit this process. And if you go to an Asian market, just know that if you're looking for Korean soy sauces, Money will tell you everything. They're more expensive because of course, it's very laborious to make it.
The cheaper varietals of Korean soy sauce will be short circuited in some way, or they'll be trying to mimic this flavor again, just like with the Chinese style soy sauce. There are two basic varieties. There are actually several, but there are two basic varieties and one is made with Out wheat, right?
And it's a lighter soy sauce. It's actually used and sometimes called soup soy sauce, made for using as a flavoring for broths. It's actually designed for that and it's called soup soy sauce. And without wheat it's usually gluten free, but check the package. And then they have one with wheat, which is a much sweeter profile. Not a sweet soy, there's no sugar added, but But it does have a sweeter flavor. That's the one usually used as a dipping sauce and for marinades.
And my favorite brand, Sempio. S E M P I O. Right. It's a really nice Korean soy sauce.
I should just say, in terms of this without wheat, the so called soup soy sauce, which you can find online and look around for Korean soup soy sauce. This is a fine addition to pork and beef stews. You don't want to put a lot into your pork and beef. I mean, even with carrots and, and, uh, onions and celery. I mean, just to. Normal North American beef stew, but if you add a tablespoon of this to it, it's going to really knock up the savory flavors way up in the stratosphere.
And it's also going to give a beautiful color to the stew. So you might want to check that out as just a common pantry ingredient. They're the two styles of Chinese soy sauce and the two styles of traditional Korean soy sauce. So now we're going to move on to Japanese soy sauce. And here's where it gets, as you can imagine, much more complicated.
When it comes to Japanese style soy sauces, there are more options. I'm not surprised. It's more complicated. I find Japanese menus to be a little more complicated. I find understanding the nuances. of Japanese cuisine, personally, to be a little more complicated. And so let's start with basic Japanese shoyu sauce, S H O Y U, which is how you say soy sauce in Japanese, is shoyu. I'm sure every Japanese person just was offended, but do go on. Forgive me.
Sometimes this is called Japanese dark soy sauce. This is the standard soy sauce you might expect at a sushi restaurant. This is
Mark's soy sauce. Think
Kikkoman.
Yeah, this is Mark's soy sauce. Because I'm a Kikkoman boy, and it is Basically Japanese soya. It is sometimes as Bruce has referred to as dark soy sauce. It's just the standard I grew up with. And I know that the other, let's say the Korean soup soy sauce is a far more sophisticated than what I'm choosing, but I can't help it. I grew up with this. And so it's just in my genes.
Quite honestly, I find the reduced sodium Kikkoman just fine for everyday use at home. When I want something a little more complex and a little more highly flavored and not just salty, I go for something called Takasan's Kishibori Shoyu. You know, what can I say? They make a really fine, basic Japanese shoyu sauce.
To confuse things, since this is dark soy sauce or shoyu from Japan, there is a light Japanese soy sauce, but believe it or not, it's saltier. I know, light. Ugh, and part of the reason here it's called light Unlike in the Chinese categories, is it is often has added ingredients to
it. Vinegar, corn syrup, even mirin. So sometimes it could be a little bit sour or a little bit sweet, and it makes it good for lighter colored dishes, like some kind of stews or soups. And these are ingredient soy sauces, not Condiment soy sauce, right? That's really important. It's an important distinction. I'll go for a basic Japanese dark soy sauce as a condiment for dipping my sushi. I will go for a light Japanese soy sauce when I'm using it as an ingredient. And a brand I like is Yamasa.
Uh, that's a really nice everyday brand for doing that.
Right, and in like manner, and this is a dipping or an ingredient, is tamari. And tamari is a subset of Japanese soy sauces. It's a byproduct, actually, of miso, like miso soup? Miso production. And it has a very high soybean content to it, and it has a very strong flavor, and it's usually a little more viscous than traditional Japanese shoyu, the traditional Japanese dark soy sauce, even like Kikkoman.
Yeah, and I like the fact that it's a little more complex. I sometimes get, you know, notes of caramel when I use it, um, and I use it as a finishing sauce, I use it as a glaze. Yeah. Most tamaris have no wheat and they are gluten free, so check the label if that's important to you. Sanjay is a very popular and common brand. It's, like, it's available in Whole Foods. I've even seen it at our local stop and shop, so it is something you can get everywhere. And
I should tell you that if you make dishes with soy sauce in them. And we, as we do, um, and you have friends who are gluten intolerant or can't have gluten for various reasons. We always have tamari in the house because it is an excellent substitute across the board, even in Chinese dishes and Thai dishes and Korean dishes. And I know it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be there. But when you do have friends who can't eat gluten, it's a good substitute for any of the above.
Tamari is just a good thing to have in your pantry of anything that we're saying here of soy sauces. I would tell you if you just want to start somewhere, go buy a bottle of tamari and it's a great place to start this whole journey through soy sauces. But there's one other kind of specialty weird soy sauce in Japan.
Yeah. Japanese white soy sauce and they call it a white soy sauce. It's not. Clear and it's not white like milk, but it is almost tan, like a very pale whiskey where it can be pink. There's one we love. The company name is Haku, H A K U. And we have gotten their soy sauces that are aged in bourbon barrels, and we've gotten their 20 year aged soy sauces, but they make pink tinged soy sauce. Darkish, liquid, white soy sauce. It's almost like vermouth. It's infused with cherry blossoms. And because
it's infused with cherry blossoms, what's it
called? Sakura. Sakura shoyu. There
you
go. White soy sauce is becoming almost a cult thing in Japan. And artisanal makers are coming up with really unusually infused So if you are into new things and finding new ingredients, just search around for some really fun white soy sauce. We didn't
have this beforehand, but I just have to say, in scrolling around on TikTok the other day, I saw, uh, Bar master, you know, a guy behind the bar. What do you call him? Bartender. Thank you. I couldn't do the work. Bar master? Well, I couldn't do the work. What kind of bar are you at? This is like, super hip. And he was putting two, maybe two drops of white soy sauce in his Manhattan's. Interesting. Because he wanted this salty edge to them. And you know, I mean, it was just a bar.
It's like a little added at the end bang ingredient. And it, what it happened to be this white soy sauce. Now it wasn't the one infused with cherry blossoms, the sakura shoyu, which Bruce just mentioned, but still it was white soy sauce. And I think he was doing that because it is a bit of a lighter flavor with that saltiness. It's not like a hit, uh, like let's see the Chinese dark soy. Oh
yeah. That would be a major hit of soy and a hit of color. And this is going to be delicate. It's really, you know, Japanese cuisine touts itself as being very delicate and I think something like a white soy sauce really goes along with that idea that it's a delicate cuisine.
And we should mention in here before we come to the end that there are all kinds of varieties of soy sauce beyond anything we've mentioned. There are sweet soys, uh, for example, in Indonesia, the famed Indonesian Dutch dish. It's hard to know where this started with the Dutch or with the Indonesians, but this, uh, ketchup money start as people in, uh, North America call it ketchup. Manis. Um, that's a very common, thick, viscous, sweet. So, you
know, it is so delicious. That you can get ketchup manna and put it on ice cream.
Oh, no. Oh yeah. No. Yeah. A little vanilla ice cream and a few
drops of ketchup,
Maise. No, no. I never do. You can't make me do that. No. Can't make you do anything. But no, and especially put any ketchup monis on, uh, ice cream. That's disgusting. But it is really good. It is really good. I have to tell you on a burger. It is really good on a hot dog. It's really good with a really hot condiment. So, like, ketchup manis and, uh, let's say kimchi on a hot dog. It's really fun. It's good with fried chicken. It's good as a dip for fried chicken.
Especially when thinned out with rice vinegar. Ketchup manis is the best. It's just a completely, um, other category on its own. And uh, you might want to try it out. It is just foundational to Indonesian cooking at this point. Although again, maybe a Dutch condiment, not an Indonesian condiment. There's all kinds of research I've done on this, believe it or not, for upcoming books. So I'm, I'm well up on my problems of kacip, uh, let me just say the new book.
It does have a recipe for ketchup manis in it, so. Yeah, it does. Um, but again, most people pronounce it ketchup manis. By the way, just if you want to know, it's spelled K E C A P. I know, cha, but it's just a C. K E C A P, like ke cap, manis, M A N I S. Kecap manis, lovely. Right, kecap manis. Um, but, uh, it, it, it, it, It is a very foundational product now for Indonesian cooking. And it's a nice thing to have in your pantry.
Again, a second thing that would be great to try for your pantry after tamari would be kecap manis and keep it around for all kinds of egg roll dips, hot dogs, hamburgers, all the things we talked about. I can imagine kecap manis on a turkey club sandwich. Um, there's just a lot of uses for it.
Oh, mix it with cocktail sauce as a dip for shrimp. Yeah,
all these things are great. All right, that's our kind of tour of basic forms of soy sauce. We have missed way more than we've included. That's like saying all the islands in the Pacific are Hawaii. So we missed a billion things. Which I've never been to. Um, okay. Uh, I have, so
good for me. So if someone from the Hawaiian tourist board is listening, you want to send us there. I would love to, like.
No, in fact, that leads me to my next point that we are an unsupported podcast. And so we wouldn't. Uh, really appreciate a rating, if you could give us a rating on whatever platform you're listening to us on, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and if you could take the time to just write a review, like Nice Podcast, where it says write a review, that would be spectacular. Thank you for doing that. Um, we'd like to keep our podcast unsupported. So that helps us get up in the analytics. All right.
Our final bit as
¶ What's making us happy in food this week: an Indonesian cookbook (SAMBAL & COCONUT) and sweet red chili sauce.
always, what's making us happy in food this week?
An Indonesian cookbook called sambal on coconut. And I just got my hands on, it's not a new book and you're not having the author on. It is a wonderful book. And Mark and I Love Asian food, but we have not had a whole lot of Indonesian food except when we've been on cruise ships There's a lot of Indonesian crew on board and we've gotten to eat some food there Yeah But I want to start making more of it and the recipes in this sambal and coconut cookbook. Look how Amazing.
Like the beef rendang and the crispy pork belly and all the
millions of sambal. Sambal is a, is an Indonesian paste or sauce. There's all kinds of sambals out there. And, uh, there's some in there that were made with, um, uh, caramelized shallots. And then you make this sambal and then later use it as the base of a sauce for jammy. Poached. Yeah, that's the dish
Mark wants you to make. It's like poached jammy, jammy yolk poached eggs in a sambal chili sauce.
That sounds like heaven. Um, well, that can't be making you happy in food this week. The anticipation of it has to be happy in food this week. I think what's made me happy in food this week is something I made last night. And that you can find on our TikTok channel. And you can find on Instagram reels under my name, Mark Scarborough, or in the Facebook. Group cooking with Bruce and Mark, and that is this, uh, sweet chili sauce.
Um, it's sometimes called Thai chili sauce, but it's not really Thai. Mm-Hmm. chili sauce. No, it's, it's a sweet Connecticut chili sauce. Right? It's a sweet red chili sauce, and I, I kind of developed it. Believe it or not, the writer actually developed a recipe and I developed this recipe for it. It's really an interesting and easy recipe for this common condiment. You've probably had it as like a dip for egg rolls and that kind of thing. A sweet chili sauce. Mine is.
Far less sweet than the standard bottled stuff and makes what? About three cups, three cups of
corn syrup, which is really nice corn syrup in it,
but it's hot. It includes sambal. There you go. That chili paste, which you can buy some, a lot, lots of red pepper flakes. It does have sugar, but not nearly so much as the standard rice
vinegar and garlic. And it is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot,
of ginger. So delicious. I chopped ginger and garlic until I was dead last night, and then made this, and, uh, you can keep it in the fridge for, the USDA is going to tell you three weeks, I'm going to tell you we keep ours for a couple months in the fridge. Well, it better
be three weeks, because then it's my birthday and we're having it with fried chicken dinner.
We are. I made it for the fried chicken dinner I'm making for Bruce's birthday in November. Okay, so that's the podcast Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being a part of this journey. We appreciate your time with us. We hope we've told you something about soy sauce and helped you understand that this is a category far beyond just the common stuff that we find even in some Asian markets, but a vast global category of ingredients and condiments and dips and sauces at this point.
Every week we tell you what's making us happy in food here in cooking with Bruce and Mark, please go to our Facebook page. Facebook group also called Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and you will see me posting every week. What's making you happy in food? Tell us. We want to know what is making you happy in food every week on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.