As I've mentioned before, I'm
changing my preferred soy sauce. Or at least using this as a reason to look at the market afresh and see what's good in the market.
The Contenders (in left to right order)
Lee Kum Kee Less Sodium Soy Sauce
Lee Kum Kee Double Fermented Soy Sauce
Pearl River Bridge Superior Light Soy Sauce
Koon Chun Thin Soy Sauce
Ve Wong Anka XO Soy Sauce with monacolin K
Amoy First Extract Light Soy Sauce
Just to get it out of the way, the LKK Less Sodium Soy Sauce was pretty poor. I won't be talking about it much. The others are all pretty good, but the differences do stand out.
One of my goals was to find a good soy sauce with a lower sodium content. Except for the Ve Wong Anka XO and the purposely reduced LKK green labeled soy, these are all as salty or more so than the Pearl River Bridge I was hoping to replace. Just keep an eye on the VE Wong Anka. Most are right around 1000 mg sodium per tablespoon. The Koon Chun was the highest sodium with 1400 and the Ve Wong Anka XO the lowest with 235.
If you click on the image below, you can read the nutritional analysis for the different brands. The Anka XO bottle was too fine of print and not quite in focus, so sorry about that.
There were a couple of phases of use this time. There was some side by side tasting and testing and then just using the different soy sauces as I cooked. The more critical tasting tests were three things:
- Tasted straight up
- Tasted as a salad dressing recipe
- tasted in a potsticker style dip recipe
Tasting straight has the most range of responses. Used in dressings and dips, the differences become much more subtle, the exception being intentionally lowered sodium soy sauce. Taking the lesson from the first testing I did as linked at the top of this post, that you need to rebalance recipes to really let the soy sauce shine in the dish, I did increase the amount of soy or dip base to create a dressing/dip that I felt was good.
Lee Kum Kee Less Sodium
Tasted Straight
Off, sweet sour thing going on
Salad Dressing
Still seems sweet and won't balance right. Off, yuck.
Dip
Fruity, sweet, wrong, strongly disfavored. I added extra
soy to try to balance it. While extra soy helped, it just
wouldn't balance.
Lee Kum Kee Double Fermented Premium Soy Sauce
Tasted Straight
Most balanced, full, rich, high complexity
Salad Dressing
Winner for it's good flavor
Dip
Comments were very close between this and the Amoy
First Pressing. LKK probably just edges out the Amoy
in flavor both from the extra ferment and the slightly
higher salt. This needed no extra tweaks to balance.
Pearl River Bridge Superior Light Soy Sauce
Tasted Straight
SALTY!!! Slight delay, then impact. Good balance between
salty and sweet, hint of malty even
Salad dressing
Good, some sweet sourness in play that was not
appreciated even though that is a an aspect of this
recipe. So it didn't balance as well as some of the other
soy sauces.
Dip
In this testing, my baseline sauce struggled to stand out.
There were dips people were liking better or worse. This
has been my baseline sauce and so I think with the
experience my family has with this, it just played up the
middle in testing.
Amoy First Extract Light Soy Sauce
Tasted Straight
more balanced, a bit sweet, greater complexity than PRB
Salad dressing
Was liked, with a comment on being a bit sweet.
Dip
Comments were very close between this and the LKK
Double Ferment. The claim of extra flavors present in the
first extraction seem to be upheld. It took a little extra
soy to balance out.
Ve Wong Anka XO Soy Sauce
Tasted Straight
Smooth, good flavor, close to pleasant even. Stronger
bean impact sort of tamari like
Salad Dressing
They were very close. When this was salted, it was as
good as any of them and still well liked even without the
extra salt. Some commenters couldn't decide between
this and the double fermented.
Dip
The first to try this commented on it being salty which
surprised me. Comments were positive but salty notes
continued to be recorded. I suspect the first comment
biased the other tasters who confused the stronger bean
impact with saltiness. It took extra soy to bring balance
to the dip, likely because of the low salt in my opinion.
Koon Chun Thin Soy Sauce
Tasted Straight
SALTY, Highest complexity, more flavor notes
Salad Dressing
Was liked but perceived as different. Koon Chun is a
distinctive soy sauce. It was liked the best in the
original tests, but it really isn't how I cook. High salt is
probably sensed but not directly percieved.
Dip
Struggled in this testing this time. My family has
become more used to my style of cooking and I think
that hindered it's performance. Comments noted it
saltiness and just different. I had to add more dip base
base to bring this dip into balance and even then it's
saltiness was noted. I still like this soy sauce a lot,
but my cooking would need adapting to really use this
sauce to its potential.
As with the Reduced Sodium Kikkoman in the first test, the Less Sodium Lee Kum Kee was obviously off. It really can't be balanced well in my opinion.
The Salad Dressing test was very close, with the power of the rice vinegar, sugar and sesame oil balancing well with all the soys except Less Sodium from LKK. Even the Ve Wong with its very low sodium did well. Note that Ve Wong is not marketed as low sodium. Towards the end of the sample salad testing, I added a little bit of salt to the Ve Wong sample and it became indistinguishable to the blind tasters. I still thought it had a more pronounced bean flavor, but 1, I knew the difference which is a bias and 2, I'm a more discriminating taster in general than the rest of my family who I used as tasters.
Some of these soy sauces are considered premium. The Amoy for being a first extraction, comparable to an extra virgin olive oil in concept. The minimal processing preserves some of the more subtle flavors. As with the olive oil, this commands a higher price.
The Lee Kum Kee Double Fermented soy also is a premium process. The soy from a single ferment process is used as the liquid for a fresh set of beans and wheat and fermented again intensifying the flavors. But at added cost.
And the Ve Wong Anka XO Soy Sauce is playing to a premium market. XO refers to Extra Old, a reference to XO sauce which itself is a reference to high grade brandy. I've seen two different XO Soy from Ve Wong. A tan label, that's a little cheaper and just as low in sodium. The red labeled variety I used here uses a higher grade of yeast, called out on the label as Monacolin K. There are claims that it
reduces cholesterol and
other health claims.
I want to compare the tan label XO to the red label XO and see what the differences are.
Ve Wong, also makes soy sauce under the Kim Ve Wong label. They make a wide range of things so check labels carefully to be sure you know what you're getting.
Those steps to produce quality do actually work. But you'll pay for them. The Amoy, LKK Double Ferment and Ve Wong are more expensive soy sauce than the rest. The finer nuances are most evident in uncooked accents and dishes. And many would keep these more expensive sauces just for that purpose, just as they would with their best extra virgin olive oils.
For a cooked dish, they'd reach for something less expensive, again as they do for their olive oil. And were I not on a sodium restriction, I'd probably do the same, keeping the PRB or Koon Chun for cooking and the LKK for dipping.
But I do have a sodium restriction. Ve Wong's performance was good enough that I'll be using it primarily, even with the added cost. I may add some salt along the way to bring the full flavor up, but I'll have the control over the sodium, not the maker of the soy sauce. That's an important factor for me.
I'll also keep LKK Double Ferment on hand and play with some mix ratios for that perfect soy for me and for use in uncooked dips and such.
My family is used to the reduced sodium flavors I cook with. This tends to mean stronger aromatics, herbs, and other seasonings. The soy sauces I used here are generally well regarded, but you should do a similar test yourself and find what you like best.
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