Japanese Food Bites: Indulging in the Taste of Summer

I’m sure some of you can confidently tell me you have tried soy sauce chicken, soy sauce onigiri, soy sauce egg, or soy sauce noodles. But can you tell me you have had soy sauce ice cream before? Before I tell you how it was, hi my name is Summer, and let me tell you about the Kikkoman Soy Sauce Museum.

Before you start drooling over the fabulous food pictures, imagine you get a whiff of soy sauce from them. A strong, salty, and savoury smell wafts through your nose; it’s like you can already taste the umami flavour on the tip of your tongue.

But what is soy sauce?

In our Kikkoman tour, soy sauce is a dark-brown, salty liquid made from soybeans, wheat, salt, and water. Starting from the raw ingredients, it goes through 7 other different steps before you see the familiar Kikkoman soy sauce bottle you have at home. It includes processing the raw ingredients, going through Koji culturing, brewing, pressing, pasteurizing, bottling, and shipping.

From Dr. Young’s biology class, we also learned that food inoculated with a single microorganism, usually the mold Aspergillus Oryzae, is referred to as Koji. A Japanese culinary staple, Koji is frequently used to make sake, miso, soy sauce, and other dishes.

One other interesting thing we acquired about this Kikkoman museum was that they have this separate building that prepares soy sauce for the emperor! At the gift store towards the end of our journey, we were able to get our hands on some soy sauce packed in this delicate little box that would make us all feel like royalty.

Can you start to imagine what the soy sauce ice cream tastes like now? It’s nothing like you imagined in your mind, actually. Packed with milkiness and creaminess, the sudden savoury umami highlights the underlying flavour. It reminded me of the salted caramel popcorn I would stuff in my mouth as a child, finishing half a bucket before the movie started in the cinema.

Adam, a fellow classmate, also tried the soy milk version of it. He mentioned, “It’s a little different. It gives off more of a nutty flavour, and definitely is less creamy, almost like almond milk.” We both agreed that the original flavour tasted better, but we had to wash it down with some piping hot green tea since it was really filling (有點膩）.

My only question left wandering is, why isn’t the ice cream black like soy sauce?