How soy sauce is made

How it should be made. There's a lot of shortcuts for mass production and like Wonder Bread that version is so pervasive it becomes what we think the real thing is. Then when we taste the real thing our mind and our preference is set to the ersatz version.

I can never seem to forget me making the most excellent bread, tasty, hearty, filling, the real thing, for spaghetti dinner, the whole family assembled, and my sister's whole family preferring what they know so her husband whipped out the standard mass produced foam white-bread on top of the bread that brought. Same deal with soy sauce.

But that video is an American company doing small batches. 

This is Japan ↓. And Japan doesn't use Kentucky whiskey barrels like those guys ↑ do. 

Originally, soy sauce was byproduct of making miso. It is the liquid that formed on the top of vats of miso as it aged. But that original soy sauce, shou, was not called soy sauce or shou, it was called tamari. And you can buy this original tamari from the best authentic miso producer in the U.S., South River miso. They offer tamari on their ordering page. I bought some of that one time. It is very good.

The first video is showing a bottle with blue label and a drawing of a soy plant. That company is named Bluegrass Soy Sauce. Those are larger quart bottles. Guess how much they cost. 

Come on, guess. 

Come on, be a sport. Guess.

Guess, I said!

Fine!  $56.50.

You see it everywhere in different bottles with different label. Teeny-tiny itty-bitty bottles of 100 ml. That's 3.38 oz, less than half a cup.  From $7.00 -$11.00  a bottle. It's just ridiculous. But reviewers rave about the flavor. Others rave about the flavor also bitch about the cost. They say it's good but not that good. Other reviewers say they prefer the lighter Kikkoman. 

My parents kept a gallon of Kikkoman in the cupboard above their stove. They were soy sauce freaks. But they never went upscale. They didn't care about tradition or aging or differences between types. They wouldn't be able to detect a difference in tastes. They just wanted something salty. A 3.38 oz bottle would be used up in one dinner. 

One night I made fettuccine Alfredo for them and the first thing both of them did was douce their entire plate with Kikkoman soy sauce. All over their parmigiano-Reggiano that is already salty. I go --whap! --that's the last time I ever make that for you. They both look at me like, what's my problem?