Posted by kathryn in Easier eating

The other Flavour Booster I’m going to talk about this week is shoyu. If you have a copy of the winter An Honest Kitchen you will spot a few different uses of shoyu. And if you’ve looked back through the recipes on this blog, again you’ll see shoyu cropping up all over the place.

Shoyu is my not-so-secret ingredient. It’s something I use often, and in a wide variety of dishes. My use of shoyu is not limited to Japanese, Chinese or even Asian cooking in general. Instead it’s something I find myself adding to recipes with influences from all around the globe.

I love shoyu because of the way it rounds out the flavours in food. A tablespoon or so of shoyu, added towards the end of cooking, will provide a depth, richness and complexity to the final meal, that was never there in the first place. It covers a multitude of cooking sins.

And plain old, cheap soy sauce just won’t do. Shoyu is definitely more expensive, but it has a much, much, much smoother flavour – and this is what you’re after.

How I use shoyu as a Flavour Booster

Shoyu is something I add very close to the end of cooking. Often I haven’t actually planned to use shoyu in the meal, instead it’s when I taste the dish, prior to serving, that I make the decision to use shoyu. If the food tastes a bit empty, or rough, as if all the flavours are competing with each other, that’s when I’ll add shoyu.

Shoyu goes really well with legumes, many tomato based dishes, soups, casseroles, stews – anything with juices or a kind of gravy. I first discovered the shoyu trick when cooking hearty lentil soups for an organic cafe and this is still one of my favourite uses.

Because shoyu has a strong flavour, it doesn’t match more delicate dishes and flavours, and you should use it carefully. I tend to start with a couple of teaspoons, stir these through and then re-taste.

Having said that, one of my favourite uses of shoyu is in salad dressings, particularly when matched with tahini.

Try adding some shoyu next time you make a soup

14 January, 2010