Thickening soy sauce increases its sweetness. It also improves its structure and consistency. You can use thick soy sauce in a variety of dishes, such as hot, sour soups and stews.
You need soy sauce whenever you are cooking Asian dishes. Soy sauce is especially needed when you are copying a particular dish.
That’s why today we will tell you how to thicken soy sauce, so that you will learn how to thicken it and how to get thicken soy sauce.
How to Thicken Soy Sauce ?
There are several ways to thicken soy sauce. You can use any of these to thicken the soy sauce. You can also thicken soy sauce by using corn starch, flour, rice starch, or reducing soy sauce.
If you are going to use flour or starch to thicken soy sauce, you need to add half a cup of cold water to it. After adding cold water, stir it well so that no clumps form in it. Then add this mixture to the soy sauce. Keep heating and simmer until you get the consistency you want.
You can use this method to thicken any sauce, be it soy sauce, chili sauce, teriyaki sauce or just gravy.
Thickening Soy Sauce with Starch or Flour
We now provide you with a list of ingredients that you can use to thicken soy sauce. Adding these ingredients can slightly change the taste of the sauce. So you can add any ingredient you like to get the taste you want.
You can thicken the soy sauce according to your needs. If you lose flavor as you thicken it, you may need to add more sauce.
Procedures:
- For half a cup of water, add flour or starch and two teaspoons of corn starch, wheat flour, rice starch, potato starch or whatever starch you like.
- Take two teaspoons of brown sugar.
- Also take the seasoning you like.
- You will need water to mix all these things well. Mix all these things well and make sure that they do not form clamps. The prepared mixture should be runny, so add more water if needed.
When all the ingredients are well mixed, add them to the simmering soy sauce. Make sure your wire is constantly shaking it over low heat. Let them warm for five minutes and it will start to thicken. You can add any seasoning you like.
If you want to keep the soy sauce less thick, add less mixture. If you add the whole mixture to the sauce, it will thicken like sour cream.
A Word on Commercial Soy Sauce
Whenever you buy soy sauce, you will always find it in a regular thinner state. This is because most of the time you get hydrolyzed soy sauce which is never thick and it is also cheap.
The real, soy sauce that is aged is a little thicker. If you want a thick soy sauce, you need to find an old aged bottle that is three or four years old.
Its color is very dark, the taste is very deep and the experience gained from it will satisfy you. You can get this kind of sauce only from the Asian market, but you have to pay more for it.
Aged soy sauce is slightly better than ordinary sauce, and it is also slightly thicker. You can use it in many dishes. Finding it can be valuable for you.
Can You Thicken Soy Sauce With Regular Flour?
Yes, with the help of flour you can thicken soy sauce easily and quickly. Your pantry also has some flour in it. Therefore, corn flour, rice flour or wheat flour is a very popular way to thicken soy sauce. All of these ingredients are easy to find.
The main reason for using these ingredients is starch in their flour, because these ingredients contain a lot of starch. Wheat, corn, rice and potato flour contain starch. This dense or viscous texture helps soy sauce to thicken. If you are going to thicken soy sauce with flour, here are some important tips to keep in mind.
Mix the flour well with water so that your sauce is not lumpy. When you mix the flour solution into the soy sauce, heat it over medium heat and then let it cool.
After adding the flour solution to the soy sauce, heat the mixture for more than a minute. So that it gives consistency to the texture of the mixture. When thickening the sauce, do not add flour directly to it. In this way, clamps will start to form in your soy sauce.
Keep in mind that the soy sauce you make at home can take a different form in Asian dishes or other dishes. This is because you have added many ingredients to thicken the sauce.
In this article we are talking about how soy sauce can be thickened, but if you want to get different flavors in it, you have to add seasoning in it.
Dried garlic, dried onion powder, chili flakes, a little sugar, soybean paste, sesame oil, oyster sauce, all these ingredients make the taste of soy sauce more delicious.
Many people are obese. Starch is an element that increases obesity. That’s why most people don’t want to thicken soy sauce with starch for fear of obesity. Similarly, you may not use starch to thicken soy sauce for fear of gaining weight.
No need to worry, there are two more ways to thicken soy sauce. If you used these two methods combinedly, you can get the best results.
In addition, it depends on how thick the soy sauce you want to make using these methods. Because with these methods, you can thicken the sauce so much that you can make a coat on the back of the spoon.
Add Sugar to Soy Sauce, Simmer Gently
Here is another ingredient that is found in your pantry. That’s why you will need brown sugar. Brown sugar also has the same properties as soy sauce, which is found in starch.
When starch is added to water, it becomes sticky. This process is called gelatinization. Sugars and starches have similar properties, only their molecular composition and chemical bonding differ.
To put it more clearly, the starch that is present in our body, when our body digested the starch, it turns into sugar. So you can use sugar as a substitute for starch.
It’s up to you how much sugar you want to use. Undoubtedly, too much sugar makes the sauce thicker. But this is not a quick way to thicken it.
If you want to make soy sauce thicker, you need to add more sugar. But keep in mind that this way your sauce will be much sweeter. To thicken the soy sauce, you need brown sugar and ghee.
Put the sauce in the pan and heat on the stove. Shake the pan and add sugar, and keep heating until the water in the sauce evaporates and the sauce thickens. It may take you ten minutes or more to repeat this process.
Soy Sauce Reduction
You do not need to add any ingredients in this last way to thicken the soy sauce. In this way you can heat the sauce and thicken it by removing the amount of water in it in the form of vapor. This method is called heat reduction method.
Steam only removes water vapor, so heating it for a while will thicken your sauce. You may have seen this method work with balsamic vinegar, the logic of both is the same.
This method takes more time than all other methods. When the sauce starts to boil, cool it and let it simmer and keep stirring while heating.
Keep in mind that once the sauce thickens, the flavor will become very strong and it will last until you add enough water to it. It can be good or bad. It all depends on how you use the sauce.
There are several ways to thicken soy sauce, but the easiest is to thicken it with starch. Both sugar and starch work well.
If you do not have both ingredients to thicken the sauce and you do not want to sweeten the sauce, then the reduction method is the best.
Hopefully, after reading this article, you will have found the answers to all the questions about soy sauce that you were not getting answers to.