Even Light Soy Sauce has a sodium content that’s beyond what I can enjoy.
Anyone have a recipe for the basic flavors imparted by soy sauce that is nominally sodium-free?
This isn’t a medical condition issue. I just cannot balance a volume demand in a recipe with the high salty taste imparted.
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You have to make it yourself. There’s a lot of recipes on the internet, many of them very complicated.
I haven’t tried this, but this is the simplest one I’ve found:
[ul]
[li]1 cup water[/li][li]1 tablespoon cooked unseasoned rice vinegar[/li][li]1 teaspoon molasses[/li][li]½ teaspoon dark brown sugar[/li][li]½ teaspoon garlic powder[/li][/ul]
Just mix everything together.
Soy sauce is a complex product with free aminos, short peptides, maillard products, sugars. And of course sodium, which you don’t want.
These complements can be found in mushrooms, meat broths, hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, seaweeds, molasses.
If you want to talk recipes, we should probably ask for a move to CS.
What are you making? Soy sauce is a source of umami and salt. If you just want the umami, I think you’d use more dashi (stock) of some kind, probably bonito flakes and kombu.
There is this soy zero but it’s a flavoring spray, so I suspect the low sodium is partly due to the tiny portion size. I’ve never tried it.
Coconut aminos might do it. Less than 10% of the sodium in a standard tamari.
Worcestershire sauce or straight MSG
Coconut aminos is (are?) good. It’s pretty readily available these days because it’s recommended for Paleo cooking.
Note that the serving size is 1tsp (5ml) while Kikkoman soy sauce is 1tbp (15ml) so sodium comparison is a little different. 90/5ml versus 570/15ml. Still less sodium in coconut aminos, and no msg.
To me, they tasted the same.
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This will do better in Cafe Society, where all the foodies hang out.
Moving thread from GQ to CS.
I hesitate to suggest this, but maybe fish sauce(nam pla) would be a decent substitute. It’s super-salty, but you use a LOT less of it than you do soy sauce, since despite being a rich source of umami compounds, it’s funky and smells like stinky feet. Used in small quantities it’s more similar to straight MSG though.
Really though… soy sauce mostly tastes like salt, umami and some roasted/maillard flavors. So I’d think maybe MSG and a tiny bit of coffee/cocoa might substitute adequately without the salt. You’d have to experiment a lot to find out the ratio though.
Isn’t Worcestershire sauce soy sauce-based?
No, it’s primarily anchovies, salt, and vinegar, aged and fermented in a wood barrel. It’s very much like Asian fish sauce.
Kitchen Bouquet Browning Sauce is very low in salt but still has some. That will give you color and some flavor.
Maggi isn’t low sodium but might be worth a look.