Many countries create variations of soy sauce that suit different needs, tastes, and recipes.
If you’ve ever seen reduced soy sauce before, you may be wondering what reduced soy sauce is. I did the research, and here are the facts I discovered!
What Is Reduced Soy Sauce?
Reduced soy sauce is another name for low sodium soy sauce, and reduced soy sauce is similar to regular soy sauce in taste and color. However, reduced soy sauce contains around 40% less sodium than other soy sauces. You can use reduced soy sauce in most recipes that call for normal soy sauce.
Do you want to learn more information about reduced soy sauce? Check out the rest of the article to find out!
How Much Salt Does Reduced Soy Sauce Contain?
Normally, reduced soy sauce contains about 40% less sodium than other soy sauces, but the exact percentage of sodium will depend on the manufacturer.
For instance, let’s say that most soy sauces have 1000 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon, so reduced soy sauce would have around 600 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon.
What Does Reduced Soy Sauce Taste Like?
Typically, reduced soy sauce tastes the same as most soy sauces since the main difference between reduced soy sauce and regular soy sauce is the salt content.
Moreover, reduced soy sauces can still taste quite salty because the sodium gets removed after the brewing process, meaning reduced soy sauce will still retain its salty flavor.
However, it is important to remember that there are different types of reduced soy sauce available, which can have different tastes.
For instance, there are reduced versions of Chinese and Japanese soy sauce, which have different flavor profiles.
Therefore, a Chinese-style reduced soy sauce would have a similar flavor profile to Chinese soy sauce yet taste different from a reduced Japanese soy sauce, and so on.
How Is Reduced Soy Sauce Made?
Usually, reduced soy sauce has the same recipe as regular soy sauce, but the steps towards the end of making reduced soy sauce are slightly different.
Usually, soy sauce is made by steaming soybeans while roasting then crushing wheat to a power, which can take several hours.
Manufacturers mix the crushed wheat and steamed soybeans with a special mold that helps the fermentation process then this mixture is left to develop for a few days.
After letting the mixture develop, the mixture gets mixed with salt and water then placed into barrels to ferment for several months or years.
Once the mixture is fermented and aged, the mixture gets put over cloth and pressed to separate the solids from the liquids, and the liquid is soy sauce.
To create reduced soy sauce, manufacturers take the liquid and remove around 40% of the sodium first, then they inspect the liquid for quality and bottle the reduced soy sauce.
What’s The Difference Between Reduced Soy Sauce And Regular Soy Sauce?
Mainly, the difference between reduced soy sauce and regular soy sauce is their sodium content, but there will not be a huge difference in flavor.
However, the actual difference in taste between regular and reduced soy sauce may not be noticeable depending on the brand that you get.
More often than not, reduced soy sauce will taste very similar to regular soy sauce, but reduced soy sauce may taste less salty based on the brand.
Is Reduced Soy Sauce The Same As Low Sodium Soy Sauce?
Technically, reduced soy sauce and low sodium soy sauce are the same things because they are both soy sauces that contain less sodium.
Therefore, you will likely still get soy sauce with a lower salt content no matter which bottle of soy sauce you choose.
Click here to learn more interesting facts about low sodium soy sauce.
How Do You Use Reduced Soy Sauce?
You can use reduced soy sauce as you would normally use regular soy sauce since the only difference between regular and reduced soy sauce is the actual sodium content.
Therefore, you can use reduced soy sauce for most recipes that call for soy sauce as a low-salt alternative.
However, the exact way you will use reduced soy sauce may depend on what type of reduced soy sauce you have.
For instance, if you have reduced dark soy sauce, then you can use it in recipes that call for dark soy sauce.
Alternately, if you have reduced light soy sauce, then you would use it mostly as a seasoning like you would with regular light soy sauce.
What Can I Substitute Reduced Soy Sauce For?
Generally, you can use any type of normal soy sauce to substitute for reduced soy sauce since reduced soy sauce is the same as regular soy sauce, but reduced soy sauce has a lower salt content.
However, you may opt for tamari soy sauce as a substitution for reduced soy sauce if you want a less salty soy sauce since tamari soy sauce is very savory and not very salty.
Is Reduced Soy Sauce Better Than Regular Soy Sauce?
Technically, reduced soy sauce is not better than regular soy sauce because they share a lot of similarities with each other.
If you prefer to consume foods that are lower in salt then reduced soy sauce is better than regular soy sauce for most of your recipes.
You can use your reduced soy sauce the same way you would use regular soy sauce since reduced soy sauce is dark brown, savory, and salty, which is what you get from regular soy sauce.
Check out our related article to learn more about regular soy sauce, tamari soy sauce, and other types of soy sauce.
Conclusion
Reduced soy sauce is also called low sodium soy sauce because around 40% of the salt content gets removed from the soy sauce.
Since reduced soy sauce only has less sodium, you can use reduced soy sauce as you would normally use regular soy sauce.