My friend Mechanic writes:

dear chewy at chew food?

what is the difference between chinese soy sauce and japanese soy sauce? or for that matter, all soy sauces from different countries? are they all the same? are they very different? i don’t get it. if i get soy sauce with my sushi can i put it on chinese food?

please let me know,

soy confused

Oh, sirry lound eye! There are many different kinds of soy sauce, made with slightly different ingredients.

I’m not gonna lie: I looked it up on Wikipedia for you. But I will give you the ADD version here.

Japanese soy sauces often contain wheat (thus making it not friendly with those with gluten allergies), whereas Chinese ones contain mostly soy and little or no other grains.

There are different colors and sweetness levels of soy sauce. You’ll often see in recipes that cook’s recommend tamari, or Japanese dark soy sauce. Tamari is wheat free, darker in color and richer in flavor. I try to keep both regular Kikkoman and a bottle of tamari in my cupboard. You taste the normal soy sauce and you go, “Oh! That’s soy sauce!” and then you go and taste the tamari and you go, “Oh! That’s fucking delicious soy sauce!”. Japanese soy sauces generally are made from equal amounts of water and soybeans, which makes it sweeter and gives it a higher alcohol content.

Then there’s that Chinese soy sauce that derives it’s amino acids from old human hair! I think rich Western white women try to eat this to get thick, lush, shiny straight hair.

Other countries that produce their own versions of soy sauce are Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea and Indonesia.

There’s also a trend to produce more low-sodium or light soy sauce, which tastes like crap and will make your food taste like crap. You might as well just dip your sashimi into urine.

Can you use the soy sauce that you get from a Japanese restaurant on food you get from a Chinese restaurant? Probably. Most of them use Kikkoman brand anyway. Unless it’s a low-end Chinese joint, where they often use some salty brown liquid that isn’t made from soy at all, but from water, salt, msg and brown. But it does have a cute panda on the packet! Like Alton Brown says, it’s always important to read the ingredient list on your soy sauce.

You could always go get a brick of ahi tuna, make some steamed veggies and purchase a dozen bottles of various soy sauces (which are available in any Chinatown grocer for about $1.50 a bottle) and have a soy sauce tasting party.

This kind of soy sauce contains 5% Dolemite.