How long have you not cooked your own meals? On the weekend, I made up my mind to make my own meal and go to the supermarket to buy supplies.
Surprised to find that in the face of various soy sauces that fill most of the shelves, I don't know how to choose. The first is various brands of soy sauce, including brands such as Kitchen State, Haitian and Qianhe. Then there are several products for each brand, including gold label soy sauce, straw mushroom soy sauce, delicious fresh, light salt soy sauce, original soy sauce, zero additives, first soy sauce and so on.
Article structure
In the face of soy sauce of soy sauce, it is really a face of confusion, as a person who often contacts condiments, it is necessary to study this problem and sort out the common soy sauce product system on the market.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" data-track="5" > national standard classification of soy sauce</h1>
To sort out a type of product, the most authoritative nature is to find the national standard for such products. Because national standards and industry standards are often classified according to the functional characteristics of the product itself, and the classification of enterprises is mostly classified according to marketing needs.
According to national standards, soy sauce is classified into four categories: special grade soy sauce, first-class soy sauce, second-grade soy sauce, and third-grade soy sauce. This classification is based on the content of amino acid nitrogen in soy sauce. The higher the nitrogen content of soy sauce, the higher the grade.
Special grade soy sauce refers to nitrogen content exceeding 0.8g/100ml, primary soy sauce with nitrogen content exceeding 0.7g/100ml, secondary soy sauce with nitrogen content exceeding 0.5g/100ml, and tertiary soy sauce with a nitrogen content of more than 0.4g/100ml.
As for why it should be classified according to the nitrogen content of amino acids, according to my personal understanding, most of the flavored substances in soy sauce are amino acid substances, such as leucine that forms an umami flavor. The higher the nitrogen content in the amino acid state, the higher the flavor substance content of the natural representative soy sauce itself, and the better the effect of seasoning.
Many soy sauce products have amino acid nitrogen content on the label of the product, so when purchasing soy sauce, the amino acid nitrogen content is an important reference.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" data-track="31" > soy sauce product system of condiment companies</h1>
kitchen
Compared with the national standard of soy sauce, the product system of soy sauce companies is much more complicated. I sorted out the product information on the official websites of haitian, jiajia, qianhe, weishida and Lee Kum Kee, and found that the system of each product has its own characteristics.
First of all, Haitian's soy sauce products are the most abundant, including special series, best-selling series, classic series, value-added series, time-honored series, special series, special series, organic series, bag series, nine series, a total of 55 kinds of products, each product contains a variety of packaging specifications.
Chef State has 24 kinds of soy sauce products, Jiajia has 44 kinds of soy sauce products, and Lee Kum Kee has 20 kinds of soy sauce products. The product system of these companies is more psychedelic, and the more you look at it, the more confused you are.
The classification of soy sauce products on the Microstar website is relatively friendly to consumers. He said that soy sauce is divided into three categories, including raw soy sauce/ dark soy sauce, umami soy sauce, and functional soy sauce. It is much easier to understand according to this division of ideas.
Raw soy sauce/soy sauce mainly includes gold standard raw soy sauce and straw mushroom soy sauce, which is the largest category of soy sauce. The annual sales of gold label raw soy sauce and straw mushroom old soy sauce in Haitian's best-selling series exceed 1 billion. In addition, brands such as Kitchen Bang, Jiajia, and Lee Kum Kee have gold label raw soy sauce and straw mushroom old soy sauce products. On the basis of the gold standard raw soy sauce, soy sauce enterprises also have special gold standard raw soy sauce, old gold standard raw soy sauce, fresh gold standard raw soy sauce and so on.
The so-called "pumping" refers to the meaning of "extraction", after the soy sauce is fermented and matured, the soy sauce can be separated. Soy sauce is made with caramel added to the soy sauce and the color is darker.
Umami soy sauce is mainly to add umami agents to soy sauce, highlighting its umami taste, mainly representing that the product is extremely fresh, basically every soy sauce company has launched a very fresh product. Among them, the annual sales of Haitian Flavor Extreme fresh exceed 1 billion.
In addition to the extremely fresh taste, there are also pure fresh taste, special taste extreme fresh, one product fresh, etc., mainly highlighting the umami characteristics of the product.
There are many categories of specialty soy sauce. According to the information I collated, the characteristic soy sauce mainly highlights the characteristics of soy sauce in terms of raw materials, brewing time, soy sauce use, salt content, and user groups
In terms of soy sauce, there are braised soy sauce for braised dishes, sushi soy sauce for sushi, cold sauce for targeted cold dishes, and steamed fish soy sauce for steamed fish.
In general, the longer the soy sauce is brewed, the better the quality. Several product lines of Chef Soy Sauce emphasize 180 days of brewing time. Qianhe soy sauce, which focuses on the high-end market, goes a step further, directly classifying soy sauce according to the brewing time, and starting from the brewing time of 180 days, 280 days and 380 days in turn.
Starting from the raw materials for soy sauce brewing, organic soy sauce emphasizes that organic raw materials are used for soy sauce brewing. The head of the soy sauce enterprises have outstanding "organic" soy sauce products.
Starting from the salt content of soy sauce, soy sauce companies have launched low-salt soy sauce, light salt soy sauce, less salt soy sauce and other products. In addition, there are also seafood soy sauce, iron-fortified soy sauce, children's soy sauce and soy sauce.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" data-track="32" > conclusion</h1>
There was once a taste test experiment about Coca-Cola and Pepsi, where when neither drink was labeled, the volunteers' evaluation of the drink was basically equal. But when the brands of the two drinks were identified, 75 percent of the volunteers chose Coca-Cola, compared to only 25 percent of Pepsi.
For many FMCG products, just from the product point of view, there is basically no difference. The difference is only the marketing effect of different manufacturers. At least for me, if it were not for the packaging of soy sauce products and various intentional and unintentional brainwashing advertisements, it would be difficult to distinguish the difference between haitian's extremely fresh taste and the extremely fresh taste of the kitchen state.
So how to choose soy sauce? Look at the mood, it is difficult to buy with money I am happy!