so you want soy sauce

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The common soybean—if there is such a thing, considering the number of present varieties—needs no introduction. Everyone knows the useful crop that feeds our livestock and yields an oil which is utilized in a wide range of chemical processes. Most of us know, too, that this legume is far higher in protein than most plant products, yet lower on the food chain than the animals from which we've traditionally obtained most of our protein supply. It's this fact that has allowed the survival of large populations in many Oriental countries . . . and, with meat prices and shortages what they are nowadays, the soybean may soon be equally important in the West.

Not everyone, though, appreciates the taste of plain boiled soybeans. (And they shouldn't be eaten in that form anyhow, according to Beatrice Trum Hunter's advice in LIFESTYLE! NO. 8. Soybeans are valuable in the Oriental diet because they're first subjected to various processes—especially fermentation—to make them digestible. Mrs. Hunter also warns that the protein in beans is not complete and can't be considered a total meat substitute. —MOTHER.) While many cookbooks offer recipes to make this food palatable, none that I've seen includes directions for the various bean products made and used in the Far East.

It's true that some of the traditional Eastern methods take a great deal of time and a certain amount of labor . . . but the procedures are less complicated than many people think. Otherwise, soy products could not have been manufactured over untold years by hundreds of thousands of Oriental women using only the most primitive techniques.

My own research and practical experience with soybean products—in connection with a book I'm writing—have convinced me that only a few basics are needed to make such foods at home: a substantial number of soybeans, a few com mon kitchen utensils, plenty of patience (especially that!) and a taste for these unique Oriental delicacies.

Let's start with the soy sauce recipe, the most complex of all. Perhaps the best brief description of the basic chemical process involved was given by a traveler named Bishop, who visited Korea between 1894 and 1897. He wrote, "Oil of sesamum is largely used in cooking, as well as vinegar, soy, and other sauces of pungent and objectionable odors, the basis of most of them being capsicums and fermented rotten beans!" If the idea of obtaining a condiment from "fermented rotten beans" doesn't bother you, however, we can proceed to the directions.

In Bishop's time, Koreans made soy sauce in the fall after the harvesting of the dried soybeans. These were first thoroughly cooked by boiling and then, while still hot and wet, immediately pounded in a mortar to a fine mash. The pulp was placed in the center of a large wooden bowl and formed by hand into a truncated cone (see Fig. I ) measuring eight or ten inches high by a foot in diameter. This object, called mei-ju, was placed on a mat of rice straw in a special chamber known as the "paper floor room". Here the cones dried to a fairly hard consistency, and each was then wrapped in two bunches of rice straw—crossed at the top—and hung from the ceiling of the same room for several weeks while fermentation got under way, Once the process was well begun, each mei-ju was taken down and stored in a large bag over the winter (in a warm room but away from the fire).

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