Weeknight Soy Sauce-y, Peanut-y Tofu Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

What does soy sauce add to a recipe? ›

From salmon to pork chops, chicken or steak, they'll all soak up the umami flavour from the soy sauce. The soy sauce will help to balance acidic flavours from the vinegar and lemon. Another great combo is soy sauce and coffee marinade for an extra juicy steak.

You might know Tofu which is a soy-based food that is made from curdling soy milk, but Peanuts Tofu is not actually tofu since it's not made with soybeans. It's named Tofu as it looks similar. Peanuts Tofu is made by heating peanuts milk made from raw peanuts with sweet potato starch.

This enticing sauce with complex flavors is great for stir-frying, stewing, dipping and marinating.

Soy sauce is a fermented food that is popular in Asian cuisine. Soy sauce might have benefits like improving gut health and reducing inflammation. Keep in mind: There's a lot of sodium in soy sauce, so ensure you eat it in moderation.

Soy sauce can be kept unopened in the pantry and away from sources of heat. It's safe to be left in the pantry once opened, too, but the flavor may change over time. “If you use soy sauce infrequently, it may be best to refrigerate it to extend its shelf life,” Edwards says.

This probably coincided with the spread of Buddhism as it is an important source of protein in the vegetarian diet of East Asian Buddhism. Li Shizhen, during the Ming dynasty, described a method of making tofu in the Compendium of Materia Medica.

Said to originate in China, tofu came to Japan in the Nara period, brought back from China along with Buddhism by the Kentoushi (Japanese envoys to China). Highly prized for its nutritional value in Shojin (vegetarian) cuisine, tofu's popularity began to spread into the wider public by the Edo period.

Fact: Tofu is sometimes called soy cheese because, like dairy cheeses, it's made with the use of a coagulant, or curdling agent, soybeans and water, but it's not a dairy-based cheese. The soybeans are soaked, ground, boiled, strained, pressed and dried.

Use soy sauce as both a condiment and a cooking ingredient. Marinades and sauces: Use soy sauce as a base for marinades and sauces. For a simple marinade, combine light soy sauce, garlic, ginger and a splash of Shaoxing rice wine. Use on meats, tofu or vegetables before stir-frying or grilling.

There is no single flavor profile for “soy”—and that's why using this term as a stand-in for “soy sauce” is problematic. Fermented soybeans have a distinctly salty, umami taste—it's the basis for soy sauce and a number of other East Asian condiments, including miso paste, gochujang, and black bean garlic sauce.

When should you add soy sauce? ›

It depends on the amount of ingredients, but it will be around a tablespoon. It cannot be reduced, so add it while watching the taste. The aroma of soy sauce changes when heat is applied, so if you put it on the edge of the pot at the end, the aroma will improve.

To put it simply, light soy sauce is used for seasoning and dark soy sauce is used for adding colour to dishes. Light soy sauce is golden brown in colour and rich in taste to add flavour during marinating and seasoning stage. It uplifts the flavour of any meat, noodles or rice dishes.

Adding soy sauce to cooking ingredients and foods can change how they taste. Lighter, saltier-tasting soy sauces bring out the delicious tastes of different things and can be used in much the same way as salt and lemon seasonings. These types are particularly good for whitefish, simmered dishes, soups and so forth.

When you cook with soy sauce, it depends what kind of recipe it is and how pronounced you want the flavour to be. In braises or recipes with a lot of liquid you can add more, but in dry dishes less would be needed. The best thing to do is add a few splashes of Kikkoman to taste and then adjust the flavour accordingly.