What is the difference between dark and light soy sauce?

Posted on by Aad Struijk

Soy sauce is a fermented sauce made from soybeans, roasted grain, water and sea salt. It is an important seasoning in all East and Southeast Asian cuisines. However, there are major differences in taste, and it is recommended to choose the soy sauce to go with a dish from the country of origin of that dish whenever possible. For example, Chinese and Japanese soy sauce cannot be substituted for each other. Japanese soy sauce tends to be considerably sweeter.

In Dutch cuisine, Indonesian soy sauce is best known, namely ketjap. Among other things, it exists in a sweet (ketjap manis) and a savory variant (ketjap asin). A similar distinction exists with other Asian soy sauces. If a recipe mentions dark soy sauce, this is the sweet variety. Light soy sauce is the savory version.

In Western countries, generic soy sauce is widely available, but you have to go to a toko or Asian supermarket if you want a specific kind. Even the distinction light or dark is not often encountered in the mainstream supermarket.

Soy sauces are used in a variety of ways: as a marinade, in (dip) sauces, as an addition in cooking and as a liquid condiment at the table. A well-known form of dipping sauce is that for Japanese sushi, in which a small amount of wasabi is often dissolved.

Soy sauce, which has an umami* flavor, contains quite a lot of salt and should therefore be used in moderation. Keep this in mind when adding salt to a preparation. Generally, but this is not a law of averages, the less salty and more syrupy dark (sweet) soy sauce is used for application in hot dishes and the thinner light (salty) soy sauce in cold dishes. If a recipe does not specify, usually assume dark soy sauce.

Salt is not only an essential component of soy sauce, it was the reason for its creation more than 2,000 years ago. Salt used to be a very expensive thing, and by harnessing it to ferment soybeans and grains, one obtained “liquid” salt in much greater quantities and thus flavoring dishes became significantly less expensive.

A more or less similar sauce from the West is soup flavoring or flavor refiner, better known by the brand name Maggi. Although its taste is very reminiscent of soy sauce, no soybeans are used in it. Also, lavash herb, often called Maggi herb because of its smell, is not an ingredient in Maggi flavor refiner. The English product Worcestershire sauce harbors flavor similarities with soy sauce, yet is more similar to other (fermented) Asian sauces (fish sauce, anchovy sauce, oyster sauce).

We recognize soy sauce as a typical Asian flavor, but it has been known in Holland since the 17th century. The United East India Company first imported the sauce from Japan (until the mid-19th century, the Netherlands held a trade monopoly on that country). Due to Holland’s colonial past, the sauce has become fairly common there, particularly through Indonesian ketjap.

  • Umami is one of the five basic flavors, along with salty, sweet, sour and bitter. It has the important property of enhancing salty and sweet flavors.