¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark. And I'm Mark Scrubber, and together with Bruce, we have published 36 cookbooks are about to publish our 37th cold canning this summer. We've talked about that already on this podcast. Our obsession with. Food and cooking, which is this podcast, I guess we have other obsessions. Mm-hmm. Bruce has a knitting obsession, including online knitting workshops and knitting books.
He's published and Mark is obsessed with Dante and other poets and writers.
I am. I have. Podcasts all about Dante and the divine comedy, but that's not this. This is all about food and cooking. So as usual, we got a one minute cooking tip. It's about soy sauce. And then we're gonna have a big segment, our central segment about the various kinds of soy sauce traditionally that are out. But you didn't
know there were that
many. No. As a kid that grew up in suburban Dallas, I thought soy sauce came in a plastic package that you ripped open at the table. So what do I know? Nothing. And then we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. So let's get started.
¶ Our one-minute cooking tip: Store opened soy sauce in the fridge.
Our one minute cooking tip, store your soy sauce like you do olive oil, because what destroys it is the same heat and light. Keep it in a dark cool place and once opened, unless you'll use it all within a month, keep it in the fridge. Okay, so that's
not like olive oil. I don't mean to correct you, but That's right. You don't put olive oil in the fridge. Well,
sometimes you might want to, if you're not gonna use it all right away, it could get gross. Oh, come on. You don't put olive oil in the fridge. I, no, but you wanna keep it away from heat and light, that's for sure. And most people don't realize you should put it in the fridge, the soy sauce, if you're not gonna use it in a month.
See, I, I think that that was a great example of us because, uh, the chef paints with a broad stroke and the writer gets very obsessed with the tiny little details.
But most people don't know that you should keep the soy sauce in the fridge. Right. If you're not gonna use it in a month. Right.
That is true. And uh, I think, I've also heard told from Asian chefs that cold soy sauce is no good. Mm-hmm. That it, well, I don't wanna say it's no good. It needs to come back to room temperature to have its full set
of flavors. That's true. And I actually do take it out of the fridge, uh, before we. Eat with it. If I'm cooking with it, it's fine outta the fridge, but if you're using it as a dip or a condiment or putting it on raw fish, right? Yes, it should come out out of the fridge and it should be at room temp,
right? So anyway, store it in the fridge for the best access. But before we get to the next segment of the podcast, which is gonna be all about soy sauce. Lemme say that we have a TikTok channel and an Instagram reels channel and a Facebook group all called Cooking with Bruce and Mark. Probably the biggest of those at this point is the TikTok channel, so, oh, yeah. If you're on TikTok, join us at cooking with Bruce and Mark. We've got all kinds of cooking videos.
We're making lots of jams and things to do with jams, but these, uh, videos appear on Instagram and Facebook. Two under the groups cooking with Bruce and Mark. Aren't we clever? We named it all the same thing. I know. Crazy. So up next, our discussion of soy sauce, we're gonna have a focus on, let's say, three different kind of national types of soy sauce and the variations inside of them. We're gonna talk about what soy sauce is, the whole McGill. So here we go.
¶ Japanese, Chinese, and Korean soy sauces: what types are there, what are their differences, and why should you have more than one in your pantry?
There are many different kinds of soy sauces and most people don't know that. Right? You'd think No soy sauce is soy sauce. Soy sauce. Like I say,
no. When I was a kid and you went to the Chinese restaurant, it came in a little plastic packet. You tore them open. Exactly.
That's all I knew. Yeah. But basically all soy sauce start as soybeans. They're sometimes mixed with roasted wheat. They've got mold or. Bacteria mixed into them and then they're fermented. And the fermentation process can take anywhere from three months to 10 years, which is why some soy sauces 10 years. Yeah. That's why some soy sauces can cost like, you know, a hundred dollars an ounce and others are 10 years, you know, 99 cents for a quart. Right.
So we're gonna talk about Japanese soy sauces. We're gonna talk about Chinese soy sauces, and we're gonna talk about Korean soy sauces.
And I just wanna say when we get started here, before we get started, we've got these three. Basic types of soy sauces that we're gonna talk about, but there are others. There are Taiwanese soy sauces, there are other soy sauces. Besides these, we've just chosen to focus on these as three big kind of culinary national categories of soy sauce, so Japanese soy sauce. I think most of us probably know, it, even if. Like me, we grew up going to suburban Dallas, Chinese restaurants. Mm-hmm.
It's the Japanese soy sauce that is at the table.
Yeah. Koman is like the brand that is usually right. And it's funny, that is a Japanese brand, but that was the one that was always even on the Chinese restaurant tables, it was Kiko always. And the one that you get there in the restaurants, that's their. Dark soy sauce and Japanese dark soy sauce is the traditional soy sauce that you think of using when you dip sushi into it. When you think of those old Chinese restaurants, I have to
say that I, this is the thing that I still go back to, despite all of the variations of soy sauce that we talk about, if I'm going to put soy sauce in anything, this is the soy sauce I use, and Bruce uses all kinds of fancy soy sauce. Mm-hmm. I love fancy and I don't. Because I think it's a childhood thing. It's like when you grew up with something and you loved it as a kid.
Uh, Bruce claims that when I put soy sauce and now I'm gonna offend every Asian that could possibly exist in the whole history of the world. When I put soy sauce on rice, don't kill me. When I put it on rice, Bruce claims I actually make soup.
Oh, he does? He just has, it's like breakfast cereal and milk. It's rice and soy sauce for him and. At least if you're doing that, go to the Japanese light soy sauce, which most people don't even know about. It's no, I'm
gonna stick with Koman. But now you can talk
about Japanese light soy sauce, and Well, here's the thing, the koman, they're not usually labeled dark, they're just labeled soy sauce. So it's a category distinction that's rarely. Even labeled on mass market brands, you have to go to artisanal, at least in North America. Yeah, you have to go to artisanal brands here in the US if you want to find this distinction. And you'll see things called Japanese light, soy sauce. It's much thinner than the traditional.
Yeah, and don't take light as in calories. This
doesn't have anything to do with. Calories. Well, I know, but it's a thing. We run the view once and I was making peanut butter and I used light corn syrup and what was her name? Starch Star Jones. Yeah. Remember Star Jones? Star Jones was like, oh yeah, we love to save those calories. I was like, uh, light corn syrup doesn't save you any calories,
but okay, good Goode. And quite honestly, in Japanese light soy sauce, you're not gonna save sodium either. 'cause that is a very salty flavor, but it also has a slight sweetness and that's 'cause they often add things like mirin or corn syrup you just talked about. There you go. Usually it's used as a soup seasoning. I've seen it labeled as soup soy sauce, which when we get to the Korean soy sauces, they have a whole category of that.
Okay. Why would I go to an Asian market and buy Japanese light soy
sauce? Let's say you wanted to use it as a seasoning and a broth. If you were making even Jewish chicken soup and you wanted to throw some noodles in it and some Asian greens in it, and season it with a little soy sauce, you get the light Japanese soy sauce. Okay,
so talk about that for a minute because I think a lot of people don't know about using light soy sauce. In this case, the Japanese light soy sauce as a seasoning in stews rather than salt.
Think about this, that salt is an enhancer. We've talked about that before. But soy sauce is a seasoning. It's a flavor. It will add some salt, but it's gonna add a lot of other characters.
So name me a dish that you would add Japanese light soy sauce to that you might not normally think of. Adding soy sauce to.
I can imagine putting a little Japanese light soy sauce in my hummus, right? Wallet's going around in the food processor. Wow. I want that. That would give it a little saltiness. It would give it some umami punch. It's got a little sweetness. It would really give it a nice little punch there. I can imagine. Putting it into ground beef before I make hamburgers. Yeah. Okay. Right, because it's going to give me all those other flavors. It's not just the hit of soy flavor that the dark soy sauce.
I'm backed with the hummus. Um,
I think I want to try hummus with some light Japanese soy sauce in it.
Okay. I think I'm gonna have to make you some for lunch later.
Yeah, I know. That sounds really good. So there is a, a separate category here that's a little bit different and that is Tamari. And you may know Tamari because you may have gluten issues or know of family members or friends with gluten issues. And if you ever serving any kind of Asian food, they may have told you to get tamari or you may have gone and get mm-hmm. Gotten tamari for them. But Tamari is essentially soy sauce, but it's made without the wheat.
This is true. It is. It is a soy sauce where the soybeans are cooked and then fermented, but there's no wheat added, so it's not as sweet as other soy sauces.
Let me just say, if you do have celiac, you should make sure that your tamari is certified gluten-free. Mm-hmm. Some tamari is made or bottled in facilities where. Other soy sauces are bottled and there may be wheat residue. you're really conscious of it, make sure it is in fact gluten's free certified.
And there's a fourth category actually of soy sauce out of Japan, and it's almost impossible to find it in the us and that's white soy sauce. And it's not white. It doesn't look like glue. It doesn't look like milk, and it's just very, very pale. It can look like tea and it's made from a high ratio of wheat to
soy. So, wait, I just wanna stop and say, so this is definitely not after Tamari gluten-free. No, this is not, this is, this is a high wheat soy sauce. Mm-hmm. And, uh, again, as Bruce says, it's almost impossible to find this. I mean, you might. Be able to go to a really high-end, large Asian grocery store, or even like H Mart and find this, but it's very hard to find in North America.
You might also be offered it if you go to a very expensive sashimi restaurant or a sushi restaurant because you know, super high-end sushi chefs don't want you destroying the flavor of the fish. They carved with regular soy sauce. So they might offer you this white soy sauce, but we don't go to those kind of restaurants, so. I've never been offered it.
No, we do not go to those kind of restaurants and, uh, I, I, I don't know. I've never even tried this kind of soy, so, so there we go. There you go. So that's an academic exercise for us. Let's move on to that. Chinese varieties. Mm-hmm. And this is a very broad brush of Chinese varieties. Mm-hmm. Uh, I believe that many Chinese chefs would knock us crazy for this because there is not just light and dark, but we're gonna divide. We are the Chinese world into light and dark soy sauce and
light and dark Chinese soy sauce are the. Opposite of what Japanese light, this is where it gets dark. Soy
sauce are gets crazy.
Yeah. Light Chinese soy sauce is the everyday soy sauce. It's the thing you put for dipping sauces. You could dip dumplings, but it's also the cooking sauce. It is the equivalent. If Japanese dark is Chinese light and it, it most resembles that, uh, so
give some brands of light soy sauce, right. Chinese? Well,
I love Pearl River Bridge. That of course is my absolute favorite. Okay. Um, Chinese soy sauce maker la Choy would be a light Chinese soy sauce.
Okay. And why would I have this at home?
This would be your go-to everyday soy sauce. This is a soy sauce. No, that's koman, but okay, go on. That's for you. That's Koman. I like my Pearl River bridge. And you like
your koman? I do. I can't help it. I like my Kiko, so. Okay. That's the light stuff. Mm-hmm. I'm trying to, and then there is the. Dark Chinese soy sauce and this stuff is again, um, it is viscous.
It is, it's thick, it's syrupy almost, and it's the addition of sugar or molasses. It is actually not quite as salty, even as the light one and you think, oh, it's darker. It's gonna have a bigger flavor. It does have a bigger soy flavor, but not saltier.. It's used almost exclusively in cooking, and it's often used as a coloring agent because a few teaspoons of this will give a dish. Dish. Oh. Like my mother's kitchen bouquet. A kitchen bouquet.
Yep. Your mother claims once she found that she never browned a piece of meat again. No. I'd rather never browned a piece of meat. She
gRED meat.
Well, you don't need to
mark.
We have kitchen
bouquet. Yes, exactly.
Caramel coloring.
Oh, um, okay. So Chinese dark sausage is not really a condiment. It's a cooking ingredient. It's an ingredient, absolutely. And it darkens Chinese bras. Mm-hmm. Like red cooking bras. Yep. Et cetera. And I have to say that when I've tried these, 'cause of course Bruce has many of these in our pantry, I do not like the taste of dark. So Chinese dark soy sauce on its own. Mm-hmm. It's too sweet. Yeah. But. That said, I know it's in a great deal of the Chinese bras that Bruce makes.
Yeah. I buy the big bottles of it. I use it in everything. It is a secret ingredient. I have put it into French beef stews sometimes. Mm-hmm. When I've wanted a slightly darker color. Okay. 'cause you know, and rather than reach for a kitchen bouquet, I mean it is. Right. Let's just call it Chinese kitchen bouquet. Right. And there you go.
Isn't, don't, don't. I know that Chinese dark, so sauce is sometimes used in as a few drops in compound butters. Don't I know this? Oh, what a great
idea. Yeah. That it's
using compound butters with like ginger, like mint ginger to make a ginger butter.
Oh, lovely. Yes. And it would give it a lovely color too. That's a great thing. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that that it's, it's a very esoteric product and yes, we do a lot of Asian cooking while we. Ba Bruce does a lot of Asian cooking and, um, we have lots of this stuff, but I would say this is more esoteric of all of 'em. So having then talked about Chinese soy sauces, let's do a complete and, uh, overly cursory look at Korean soy sauces and Korean sauces or Kang. They're very difficult to, for, uh, north American to figure out. Yeah.
First of all, you're going to have to go to an Asian grocery store. They're not going to be in your supermarket, and you're probably gonna need to go to a Korean grocery store, like an H Mart, as Mark said earlier.
And if you're looking for an interesting take on soy sauce, Korean soy sauces are a good place to start. And there are essentially three different varieties. And there's a ong or a soy sauce that is. Called sometimes a soup soy sauce. Yeah, so why don't you talk about
that. Well, the soup soy sauce is very similar to the Japanese light soy sauce in that it's a little thinner, a little lighter tasting, a little lighter in color, except no wheat, right? Right. It's closer to the tamari in that it is not made with wheat when, but you have to check the bottles, please. And then there's a different kind of Jiang, which is made with wheat, closer to a standard Japanese. Dark or a Chinese light soy sauce that's gonna have your soybeans and your wheat.
So, the three bottles that I. Always have on hand is going to be a Japanese dark soy sauce, a Chinese light soy sauce, and this Y Joe Jiang, which is the regular non Y.
Okay, well,
you speak Korean, but No, I don't, I don't, I just know
about
those long vowels in Korean Y. But that's the, that's the Korean soy sauce. That is not the soup soy sauce, the traditional soy sauce. Yeah, and it, why
would I have that on hand? Why would I have that in my pantry?
You would have that because you like to try new things because it has a slightly different flavor profile than the other soy sauces. It's a slightly sweeter flavor. Okay. Than the Japanese dark. Okay. And also to me, it has an herbally quality, even a. Peppery quality that I like. That goes really nice with the standard Korean flavors of sesame and scallion. So lot of black, so pepper.
I mean, why would I have this around? Why would have the Y zj around you
If you want, make some stir fried sweet potato noodles called if you're going to make some bulgogi. And again. Don't write in and complain about my Korean pronunciation. If you're gonna make a beam bap, if you're going to try your hand at Korean barbecue, you definitely want to try using an authentic Korean soy sauce to, to really get the full experience.
And now, and now you're really hearing the process of writing cookbooks for us. Okay, so now you've done all of that. Now tell me, if I didn't wanna make Korean food, why
would I have that around? You might wanna try drizzling it over some scrambled eggs or an omelet. Okay? I think that's a lovely thing you Mark can try making your rice soy sauce soup out of that and see what you think, especially if you use a nice Korean rice or rice and grain blend. What about
for barbecue marinades?
A little bit of this soy sauce in any existing barbecue marinade you already make, whether it's, an oil and vinegar base, whether it's a, an American Southwest rub, whether it's a Middle Eastern or even a Mediterranean flavor profile. A little bit of this. Korean soy sauce will give it a depth of flavor. You won't forget.
And there's one other, uh, Korean soy sauce you can find. And it's chemically produced. Yeah, it's j and it's, um, it's okay. Mm-hmm. It's, I would say it's not my favorite.
No. I would say avoid it if you can. So look at the ingredients if it's made with hydrolyzed soy proteins. Um, okay. So
I, what I just wanna say is that what you just watched happen or listened to happen is basically our process of writing cookbooks, because Bruce gets. All up in the culinary and theoretical bits, and I, as the writer, keep pushing it back to what does a person do in their everyday kitchen with this?
And honestly, that whole thing as we were recording, it felt like writing a cookbook for us because it felt like Bruce is up here in the stratosphere somewhere in culinary technique and chef language, and I keep saying, okay. And, sorry, this is always my example. What would your sister or my friend in Dallas, Debbie, who I know is listening to this podcast or my friends here in Connecticut, what would they do with this? And this is.
Always my question, while writing cookbooks, it comes up a thousand times. Why would your sister buy this? And it it, it's part of the whole process of how we actually craft a book out.
It is, I wish you'd asked me why my mother would buy it, because that's much easier. My mother loves to just explore new foods. Well, no, she loves going down the aisles of. More than trying new things.
No, I'm not interested in that because I wanna know more about, you know, just a person going to work and coming home. Where are they gonna want this in their pantry? And why are they gonna wanna do this? And of course, Bruce loves it because it's interesting and theoretical and it's an experiment and taste and all this stuff, which is what chefs do. Mm-hmm. But as the writer, it is my. Job to pull this thing back toward the North American marketplace and the UK marketplace.
So I'm constantly asking, what does this do for the average commuter driving home from work?
Yeah. Mark always asks me, why did you pick that jar out of the pantry? 'cause if I have six different kinds of vinegars, right? Six different black. Vinegars from all over Asia. Why'd you
pick that one? Right? And that's the big question and that's part of this whole soy sauce discussion and you can hear it. Bruce is very excited about all these categories because of course they represent various culinary tropes and various culinary categories, and they represent various culinary experimentations he can make and all this stuff. And I just keep saying why. Why, why, why, why, why? 'cause I want to. No, you have to have a more practical reason than that. Mm-hmm.
If, if you're gonna actually sell a cookbook or a recipe, well, okay. So we've spent way too long talking about soy sauce and how soy sauce, oh, we should go on for another hour. Trust me. I'm sure we could, but we're not going to 'cause this is also the writer's job is to call a halt to an ongoing giant discussion of exactly how you pick the right kiwi fruit.
And instead, instead just cut it to the chase so the writer is gonna cut it to the chase and say, that's all we're gonna say about soy sauces. You should go to a place like an H Mart or a large Asian grocery store. You should look at all of the soy sauces. We even go to this really tiny Asian grocery store in New Haven, Connecticut sometimes. And um, it's just a small two aisle grocery store with a refrigerator case, and they have an astounding array of soy sauces in there.
So if you pick any market, but. May I say an H Mart, you will find a million different kinds of sore sauces and you can experiment yourself if you're so interested, or at least up your barbecue or scrambled egg at hummus game. Okay. Before we get to the final segment of this podcast, what's making us happy in food this week? Let me say that, as I said, we do have these reels on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. We also have a Facebook group.
Clicking with Bruce and Mark, if you're interested in being part of that group, join us on Facebook. We post these episodes and we always ask you the question we're about to ask ourselves,
¶ What's making us happy in food this week: pho and the Ithaca NY farmers' market.
what's making us happy in food this week?
For me, it's gotta be something I hadn't had in a very long time. Fu Mark and I went. True. We did. We went out to an Asian noodle
bar restaurant. Post post annual doctor physicals. Yep. So when you have your physical and you get your blood work, make sure you go someplace and order a big bowl of brisket fat
and go on. Yeah. So. Mark's bowl was all based with rice, noodles and brisket. It was, mine had this strip steak that was grilled and sliced and put on top, but then they said, would you like to add something? We suggest adding the brisket. So I had the brisket added to the strip steak. Only
you would have brisket and strip steak
So we had that lunch and then about seven o'clock that night, more like, you're not making dinner. I'm like, oh, I'm still full from lunch. That was stayed with me,
but that was good. It was good. It, it was really wild. Um, I wouldn't say it's the best pho I'd ever had. The broth was a little lacking, but the meat was not lacking. The meat
was amazing. They had
so. Is that a verb? Okay. They had so heated the brisket, so it was still pink inside, but super tender and, and
each piece I doused
in black vinegar before I ate it. It was so good. It was really kind of a crazy thing. So, uh, what was making me happy in food this last weekend is Bruce and I spent a weekend in the Finger Lakes of New York and we went down to Ithaca and we explored the. Ithaca, New York Farmer's Market. And let me just say that if you have never been to Ithaca, you should, if you like waterfalls, because there are about a billion waterfalls.
I may have overstated, but seems like a billion within a very, very short distance from Ithaca and even on the campus of Cornell, but beyond. That there is the Ithaca Farmer's Market, which has been built on the shores of one of the finger lakes. It is a really spectacular and special farmer's market. Mm-hmm. Lots of people. We were there on a Saturday. It was crowded, but it was nicely crowded.
Lots of families, lots of strollers, lots of people making lunch stands where you can eat lunch if you're ever in upstate New York, and you should visit for all the waterfalls. You should really make a trip to the Ithaca Farmer's Market. It was fabulous. It's quite amazing, and I bought to continue this discussion, some beautiful white kimchi, which is the non deeply fermented, not terribly hot. Mm-hmm. Kimchi from a vendor at that farmer's market. It was really great.
Okay. That's the podcast for this week. Thanks for being part of our community. Thanks for being with us on this journey. We appreciate your being here, and we hope that you will like and subscribe to this podcast to keep it in your feed.
Please go to our Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark and tell us what's making you happy in food. This week. We want to know, because we share what's making us happy each week. We wanna know what's making you happy in food. This week here at Cooking with Bruce and Mark,