Asian Food Is Highly Popular And Is Made With Mold

You can hardly find a person who does not like Asian food and anyone who enjoys soy sauce is not alone. In roughly two thousand years soy sauce has become one of the most popular and consumed condiments in history. Soy sauce originated in Asia, because in ancient times Asians had to package meat and fish tightly in salt in order to preserve the meat and excess liquid would be drained as a result. The liquid, which has soaked in the meat and salts flavor, would be used as a seasoning for other foods, like noodles or rice. However, when Buddhism began to rise in popularity, there was a shift from eating meat to eating vegetables and, therefore, the recipe for this seasoning also had to change. The recipe went to a salty paste of fermented grains. It was this recipe that became a prototype for soy sauce.

The recipe spread to Japan where it was modified and improved and a woman opened the world’s very first commercial brewery specializing in soy sauce. It was then that soy sauce’s popularity began to skyrocket.

Soy sauce, in the modern day, is made using mashed soy beans, wheat, salt, and a fermenting agent which is the very same kind as used in the production of sake, Aspergillus oryzae. Aspergillus oryzae is a popular alternative. This mold is the most important ingredient in the making of soy sauce. It is this mold that makes it true soy sauce.

The previously mentioned Aspergillus oryzae is used in other things as well, such as Japanese rice wine. The mold is used to ferment rice that has been steam and milled down to around 50 percent of its original mass and weight in order to remove amino acids, proteins, and fats that can make the smell of the wine less than pleasant.

Sake brewers take the cultivation of this mold at the utmost seriousness, because the mold is capable of absorbing surrounding odors. The same goes for flavors. For example, if the wood of the brewing wood is cedar, a slight cedar flavor will be absorbed. The mold is helpful for precisely these reasons. Sake and wine have a tendency to age in very different manners. Sake should be drunk almost as soon as it is purchased. While sake can, at times, taste better with age, it usually just tastes less than spectacular. Try some of these foods, You might find the you like them if you have not tried them.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of
Texas Water Damage Restoration and
Dallas Water Damage Restoration Which are Certified IICRC Water damage and mold remediation contractors.