Have you been cooking your favorite soy sauce based dishes and realized that they did not taste the same as before?
It had been bugging me for some time a few years back. Adobo doesn’t taste the same. Steamed fish with soy sauce doesn’t taste the same, either. The soy sauce was too harsh, for lack of a better word. The soy sauce had no nuance, no depth.
FAKE VS. REAL SOY SAUCE
Then while researching something called liquid aminos, I came across an article that talked about the different kinds of soy sauces. I learned that some manufacturers have been making FAKE soy sauce and marketing them as the real thing! Yes, many of the popular brands of soy sauce here in the Philippines don’t sell real soy sauce!
What they do is just make a concoction with salt, water, some protein extract, flavor enhancers and coloring! They call this the “chemical method” of making soy sauce. This process only takes 2-3 days. This makes it much, much cheaper to produce.
REAL SOY SAUCE IS NATURALLY BREWED AND FERMENTED FROM SOYBEANS. The entire process takes months and results in a much more flavorful product.
HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SOY SAUCE IS THE REAL THING
My friend S and I were talking about food, I can’t remember about what anymore, and I just mentioned the fake soy sauce in passing. She asked me more about it so I told her all about fake soy sauce. Being someone who was careful about her health, I was surprised that she had not heard about this whole fake soy sauce thing.
Once she read all about it, she asked me what brands were okay, and had her mom buy real soy sauce immediately!
As for myself, before reading about fake soy sauce, it had never even occurred to me that anyone would even try to fake it because it’s so ubiquitous and so cheap!
I am writing this blog post to inform my readers about fake soy sauce, since I realized that many people may not know that they are buying fake soy sauce.
SO, THIS IS HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SOY SAUCE IS AUTHENTIC:
It should say NATURALLY BREWED somewhere on the label.
Read the ingredients list. You can’t really tell based on the ingredients alone, because chemically produced soy sauce and traditionally brewed soy sauce basically have the same ingredients. But if you see “soy bean extract”, that could be a clue that it was not brewed. It means they did not actually ferment soy beans but just added an extract.
This is the ingredients list of a chemically-produced soy sauce:
If you are asking why we have this fake soy sauce at home, it is because my sister made a mistake. She couldn’t find the Coconut Brand that I requested, and she thought that this well-known brand was authentic. It is not. This brand has another, harder to find soy sauce product that is naturally brewed, but the regular stuff of theirs that you find on supermarket shelves is NOT naturally brewed.
I don’t know when local soy sauce producers started making chemical soy sauces instead of the real thing.
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF REAL, NATURALLY BREWED SOY SAUCES
Fake soy sauces taste like crap. Maalat na mapakla na walang lasa. Naturally brewed soy sauces taste so much better and have a more complex flavor. They have that zing, a certain salty tartness, malinamnam.
These are the actual soy sauces that we have at home. This is not a sponsored post. This is what we really have at home. As you can see, the soy sauces are used! 
Here are the the ingredients for the Lee Kum Kee soy sauces:
Oh, we also have some Kikkoman, but we mostly use it for dips and not for actual cooking, so I forgot to include it in the picture.
Note: Some people have been telling me that Lee Kum Kee soy sauce has sugar and MSG listed on the ingredients. I am not promoting nor defending LKK soy sauce, this is just what we have at home right now. It is difficult to find naturally brewed soy sauce so I bought this based on price and also because it met the criteria of being naturally brewed. We use a lot of LKK brand sauces at home like Hoisin Sauce, Sesame Oil, so I picked a brand I was familiar with.
The Lee Kum Kee bottles were about P60-P70 per 500 ml bottle, if I recall. Really not that expensive, but still expensive enough that I only use them for special dishes and for when I am the one doing the cooking.
That is why we also have the Coconut Brand soy sauce. This one is only P229.95 for the entire 1 gallon jug. We bought this at S&R. I saw this at other supermarkets and it was around P255, P25 more expensive!
This is what I use for soy sauce heavy dishes like adobo or pata tim. The Lee Kum Kee is lighter than Coconut Brand. I don’t want to use up the whole bottle of Lee Kum Kee just for one dish, you know? I usually cook a double batch and freeze the extra for another meal.
The Coconut brand soy sauce is also the one we use for regular cooking. I really don’t think our helper will appreciate the superior qualities, and price, of the Lee Kum Kee. She will most likely just use it like it was regular soy sauce. Sayang naman! So when she’s cooking our daily food, she uses the Coconut Brand. It’s a good soy sauce but it’s inexpensive enough that I really won’t mind how much she uses.
DON’T BUY FAKE SOY SAUCE ANYMORE
Last time I checked, the price for the fake soy sauce was about P110 for half a gallon jug. It’s only a very small price difference with Coconut Brand’s price. It’s not even double or triple the price.
Barat ako but I would rather pay a little extra and get the real soy sauce. The fake soy sauce will just leave you wondering why your adobo doesn’t taste as good as it used to. It will make you disappointed and waste all the time, ingredients and effort you put into your cooking!
Hope you found this post helpful!
24 responses to “How To Tell If Your Soy Sauce is Fake!”
thank you bq. this is really informative writing.
Thank you for taking the time to comment, sir diego 🙂
i’d like to share as well that one popular brand, has MSG or monosodium glutamate, tsk very bad for our health!
I think I saw that brand, too! People really need to find out about this fake soy sauce thing that is everywhere at the supermarkets.
MSG is not bad for you. That’s a long since busted myth. MSG makes everything taste so much better. Use it. In moderation of course, like salt.
love your informative post ms. Barat Queen. practical Barat 😀 is the best Barat.
Thank you! Of course! Wise dapat palagi 🙂 Barat does not mean kuripot, it means knowing where to spend money and knowing where not to waste it!
We use a lot of soy sauce in our cooking at home and I noticed that some brands make our favorite adobo taste diffirent. That Coconut brand of soy sauce is interesting. Must take note for when I visit S&R. Thanks for all these info. 🙂
Hello, edelweiza! Yeah, the different tasting adobo had me scratching my head for some time until I learned about fake soy sauce… it was brown, it was salty, but it did not taste right.
why need to indicate S&R on your comment? so yayamanin ka te?
Wag naman tayo hater 🙂 anybody can be a member of S&R. Wala namang masama sa sinabi niya. Peace 🙂
Hi Ms. BQ!
We also use Coconut Brand Soy Sauce! We did try the other cheaper brands, but it really tastes like crap!! Iba talaga pag si Coconut Brand Soy Sauce…
Maybe you can also add na technically, Coconut Brand Soy Sauce is CHEAPER than Silver Swan/Datu Puti since Coconut Brand is much more concentrated due to fermentation period… You’ll probably have to use 1 whole gallon of Brand X and only 1/3 of a gallon for Coconut Brand.. So technically, if you think about it, mas mura si Coconut Brand! haha!
Thank you for your time!
Oh, that’s true! Coconut Brand is really much more concentrated. For me, it’s best for cooking but for dipping, I find it too concentrated 🙂
Most of ur articles are sooooooooooo informative. I have probz with soy sauce, too. I only know abt Coconut brand today. Where else can we find it? I use Datu Puti and Marca Pina. I will read the ings.
Articles are clearly explained even in Filipino to be more understandable and even step by step, even with photos. LOL.
Thanks.
Thank you for your kind comment, Beverly 🙂 I am so happy you appreciate all the effort.
you are a reliable informant. now i became aware of what is a good toyo. you know may toyo talaga ang mga gumagawa ng peke ‘toyo’. dapat pala may naturally fermented and not extract. i only started using coconut brand a couple of months ago and it is sulit talaga. barato (cheap) when using it for cooking.
Hi Arnie,
Thank you very much for your comment! I never ever thought that people would still make fake soy sauce because soy sauce is so cheap!
I encourage everyone to get the real toyo that is made the way it is supposed to be made. Support the companies that still make it this way and don’t buy the short-cut toyo. 🙂
I remember years ago when a government personnel told the public that he will expose fake soy sauce bands. However, it never happened. We find it odd. Some even speculate: “Baka nagkabayaran na…” I am glad reading your article as our household also prefer the natural ones. I hope it continues to educate the ignorant public.
Hi Pilapz,
Thank you very much for your comment 🙂 Up to this day I am still amazed at how so many people are unaware of fake or chemically-produced soy sauce.
I saw someone using a popular fake soy sauce brand and asked her if she was aware that naturally brewed soy sauces are better. She had no idea. She just said that she just used the brands she grew up with and never really thought about it.
It wasn’t as if she couldn’t afford better soy sauce. She was just totally unaware there was such a thing. She thought soy sauce was soy sauce and that they were all the same.
I never used to understand the difference in soy sauces until I started buying the lee kum kee brand this past year, then when I ran out of that I pulled some packets of kari-out brand from the local chinese joint to put on my rice. Absolutely flavorless, turned my rice brown with no flavor and tasted as bad as it looked. Took a look at the ingredients and sure enough hydrolized soy and corn were listed as ingredients. Never again, yuck
Thank you for sharing, JP 🙂
I know right?! Once you know, you can’t un-know. Real soy sauce has flavor and a bit of a wine-y smell/taste.
I recently noticed that the soy sauce included with take out food tasted absolutely disgusting and that it was not the usual brand. It destroys the meal. So I went looking for answers. Thankyou for your article. Now, I refuse the restaurants packets, but unfortunately, the restaurant food is made with same awful fake sauce! I have stocked up on the real stuff, which BTW has increased in price so much. Am basically making my own food now.
Hi Moira,
Thank you very much for taking the time to comment 🙂
If a restaurant gives you fake, bad-tasting soy sauce for your packets, you can bet that’s what they are also using to cook with. Restaurants that really care about how their food tastes will also provide the same quality soy sauce in their takeout packets to complement the food. What a waste it is to ruin good food with a bad-tasting soy sauce dip, right?
Karen
l totally agree with you. I have been a user of Coconut Brand, 1. My mom uses it ever since I was a kid and her adobo is faaarrrr different from the typical adobos I have tasted, it is because Coconut brand has a distingtive taste, authentic for me. 2. When I lived independently, I told myself I will buy and try good ingredients (no matter how much it’ll be) to taste the difference, so I started wondering why Datu puti, silver swan etc etc is ‘cheaper’ than the other soy sauce. I looked at the ingredients and found out that these products were mere colorings and chemicals. So now I understand that Coconut Brand is really a premium brand!
Same goes with VINEGAR. My go to vinegar would be SUKANG PUTI MARCA PINA. Ditch DP and SS