Is light soy sauce listed in ingredient listing, lighter colored (but often saltier) and called light soy sauce or is it low salt/less sodium soy sauce.  Light soy sauce is preferred when recipes do not want dark color of traditional soy sauce.

Light soy sauce is in our index Rinshin (along with around 30 other variants of soy sauce). Over 13,000 of our indexed recipes contain "light soy sauce" as a listed ingredient! :-)

Hi Rinshin,

At least with American cookbooks, I figure the author means the lighter colored version when they list  light soy sauce.  On the other hand, I don't know that I would own a cookbook that wanted me to use lower sodium soy sauce, which I don't like the taste of. 

I don't think I have seen low sodium specified anywhere other than diet books.  I usually opt to use a little less than is called for and adjust to taste.

Zephy

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

Is light soy sauce listed in ingredient listing, lighter colored (but often saltier) and called light soy sauce or is it low salt/less sodium soy sauce.  Light soy sauce is preferred when recipes do not want dark color of traditional soy sauce.

I assume that "light soy sauce" (which is sometimes labeled as such) is the usual Chinese soy sauce while "dark soy sauce" is the darker, aged longer soy sauce used by the Cantonese. Okay, that's what a Malayasian Chinese woman taught me 50 years ago but it seems to work fairly well when the brand doesn't use the light/dark distinction. When light refers to low-sodium it is usually spelled "lite" in my experience.

Thank you.  I am familiar with Japanese soy sauce ie shoyu or koikuchi shoyu, light soy sauce ie usukuchi shoyu, fresh soy sauce ie nama shoyu, and sold in the US less sodium soy sauce, but was not sure with Thai recipes when looking at ingredient list to see if I have it.  Like this one 

Skewered marinated pork (Moo ping)from Vatch's Thai Street Food by Vatcharin Bhumichitr

Researching more, I found that Thai recipes also specify dark ie see ew dahm and  light sometimes called white or thin soy sauce ie see ew khao.

Originally Posted by: debkellie

Light soy sauce is in our index Rinshin (along with around 30 other variants of soy sauce). Over 13,000 of our indexed recipes contain "light soy sauce" as a listed ingredient! :-)

Yes, I was asking about the index list when light soy sauce is shown.

Originally Posted by: mjes

I assume that "light soy sauce" (which is sometimes labeled as such) is the usual Chinese soy sauce while "dark soy sauce" is the darker, aged longer soy sauce used by the Cantonese. Okay, that's what a Malayasian Chinese woman taught me 50 years ago but it seems to work fairly well when the brand doesn't use the light/dark distinction. When light refers to low-sodium it is usually spelled "lite" in my experience.

ahh, lite, that makes sense.

Originally Posted by: Zephyrness

Hi Rinshin,

At least with American cookbooks, I figure the author means the lighter colored version when they list  light soy sauce.  On the other hand, I don't know that I would own a cookbook that wanted me to use lower sodium soy sauce, which I don't like the taste of. 

I don't think I have seen low sodium specified anywhere other than diet books.  I usually opt to use a little less than is called for and adjust to taste.

Zephy

i bought less sodium soy sauce ie 30% less few weeks ago for the first time since that is all Costco had.  I have not tasted it yet, but unfortunately it was in a bigger bottle. 

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

Is light soy sauce listed in ingredient listing, lighter colored (but often saltier) and called light soy sauce or is it low salt/less sodium soy sauce.  Light soy sauce is preferred when recipes do not want dark color of traditional soy sauce.

Marcus Samuelsson's cookbook The Rise has several recipes that call for white soy sauce (Shoyu according to google) which is lighter in color. I looked at the indexed recipes, however, and it is just listed as soy sauce...

Barb_N - I checked our index against the book and the only recipe that had "white soy sauce" in the ingredients has that listed in our index:
Seared scallops with white soy butter and bok choy

The other 15 recipes in the index with "soy sauce" have that listed in the book. Can you please let us know which other recipes in your book have white soy sauce? We indexed from an advance review copy so it is possible something changed between our copy and yours.

Originally Posted by: Zephyrness

Hi Rinshin,

At least with American cookbooks, I figure the author means the lighter colored version when they list  light soy sauce.  On the other hand, I don't know that I would own a cookbook that wanted me to use lower sodium soy sauce, which I don't like the taste of. 

I don't think I have seen low sodium specified anywhere other than diet books.  I usually opt to use a little less than is called for and adjust to taste.

Zephy

I was curious so I checked my data base of recipes I keep and found  only 11! out of 11872 recipes like this one from Milk Street - Ginger-Shiitake Celery Stir-Fry. This one is an easy recipe to make for trying out low sodium soy sauce to go along tonight's dinner of bbq chicken.

So, certainly not many low sodium soy sauce recipes.  

This is fairly useful ...

https://www.theguardian....y?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

If I ever need light soy I just water down the dark stuff. Seems to work ok.