From a soybean to a drop of traditional handmade soy sauce, this three-thousand-year-old intangible cultural heritage has become an indispensable condiment on every family table.
Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, these are our Chinese three meals a day!
I started preparing this video a long time ago. Soy sauce is an essential condiment for our Chinese three meals a day. Whether it’s fried, boiled, steamed, fried, stir-fried, or a salad dish is important.
The History Of Stuffed Soy Sauce
Our traditional Chinese soy sauce has a history of thousands of years, and there have been records of making soy sauce since the Zhou Dynasty. Soy sauce has become an important intangible cultural heritage of my country.
The Process Of Liziqi Making Soy Sauce
The temperature and sunshine in summer are the best magic weapon for making soy sauce, and this season is the most suitable for soybean fermentation and exposure. After washing the soybeans to remove impurities, soak them until they are swollen, and then steam them softly in a pot. Stir in wheat flour when it is more than 30 degrees, and then rely on the natural bacteria in the air to complete the fermentation.
After the soybeans and wheat flour are evenly mixed, they must be placed in a room that ensures a suitable fermentation temperature. After fermentation begins, as shown in the video, the beans can be seen drying out within a week. The surface of the beans will vary from white to greenish-yellow, covered with good-looking bacteria. This is one of the keys to the quality of the finished soy sauce.
Stir a certain proportion of salt with water, and then soak the fermented soybeans. Next is the most important part of making soy sauce. Be sure to expose to the sun and keep turning! Be careful not to get caught in the rain, it will not work. It needs to be turned and dried almost every day, and the sauce embryo will mature after half a year.
Then, the mature sauce embryo is mixed with a certain proportion of water and soaked for a day or two before pressing. The soy sauce that has been pressed and filtered is our raw soy sauce. At this time, only half of the brewing of soy sauce is completed.
The raw soy sauce should continue to be exposed to the sun for purification, so that the amino acids in the soy sauce can reach the standard. This only depends on experience, and depends on the sun and temperature to determine the exposure time. I have been drying it for more than a month before I boil it.
Boiling is actually the process of stopping the fermentation of microorganisms in raw soy sauce. In other words, sterilization. Now many traditional handmade soy sauces have special sterilizers, but my family does not have them. So I cook it the old-fashioned way. Boil it several times, let it cool, and finally seal it into a sterilized jar. This is finally done.
I ended up making braised pork rice, pickled cucumber, kiln chicken and boiled cabbage with soy sauce. Now many places in my country have their own traditional soy sauce brewing technology, but no matter what technology is used to brew soy sauce, it is inseparable from good sunshine and hard-working and intelligent Chinese.
I made this video to pay tribute to the craftsmen who are still inheriting and dedicating to our traditional culture! For more details, please watch the video, thank you for your interest in reading.