with salt water, but with a previous batch of
soy sauce.
“Chemical” Soy Sauce Industrial producers
have been making nonfermented
approximations of soy sauce since the 1920s,
when the Japanese first used chemically
modified soy protein (“hydrolyzed vegetable
protein”) as an ingredient. Nowadays, defatted
soy meal, the residue of soybean oil
production, is broken down — hydrolyzed —
into amino acids and sugars with concentrated
hydrochloric acid. This caustic mixture is then
neutralized with alkaline sodium carbonate,
and flavored and colored with corn syrup,
caramel, water, and salt. Such quick
“chemical” soy sauce has a very different
character from the slow fermented version,
and is usually blended with at least some
genuine fermented soy sauce to make it
palatable.
The Original Ketchup