Yellow Bean Sauce

Appears in

Southeast Asian Flavors: Adventures in Cooking the Foods of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia & Singapore

Published 2008

About

This is a Vietnamese sauce, produced in a way similar to soy sauce. Traditional versions of peanut sauce and other dipping sauces for the beloved Vietnamese salad roll were made from yellow bean sauce, but it is n ow commonly replaced by the much darker and sweeter hoisin sauce. Thai: dtao jee-ao kao, Vietnamese: tương bần

How Lee Kum Kee Soy Sauce is Made

The three main types of soy sauce used in Southeast Asia are light soy, dark soy, and thick soy. All are produced using the same basic technique, with only slight variations. The cleaned, dried soybeans are soaked to soften and re hydrate them. These soaked beans are then cooked and cooled.

The next stage is where the alchemy begins. A revered strain of mold, aspergillus orzyae, is added. The mold has been cultivated on sterilized wheat bran, which remains with the mold as it is mixed with wheat flour and then used to coat the soybeans. The coated soybeans, which become white in appearance, are transferred into large troughs in a climate-controlled room. The temperature, humidity and airflow are all precisely managed to maximize the mold’s growth.

An enzymatic fermentation process begins, and the complex umami (sidebar.) flavors begin to develop. After two days the soybeans are deep green-brown and ready to be fermented. They are ground, combined with saltwater, and placed in fermentation vats. The breakdown of proteins into deep brown soy sauce takes three to six months. During this time the contents of the vat are active; they’re bubbling, propagating yeasts, producing alcohol, and developing color (a function of the Maillard Reaction).

Once the soy sauce has been drained off, the soybean mash left behind (by itself known as “brown ground bean sauce”) is utilized in the making of various other sauces (such as hoisin sauce). Alternately, saltwater is sometimes added to this mash, and the mixture is fermented again for a less-costly soy sauce.

The fermented soy sauce is moved to sedimentation tanks to remove excess particles, then strained and heat-pasteurized to kill the live culture. This heat process ensures that the sauce does not continue to ferment and change in flavor. The sauce is filtered again to remove any residual sediment, and then it’s transferred into the final packaging.

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