Yu Ding Xing

古早味手工柴燒醬油膏

Name: Traditional Firewood Soy Paste
Brand: Yu Ding Xing
SKU: YX010200
Price: 16.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5.0 (7 reviews)

Traditional Firewood Soy Paste

$16.00

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Soy paste is a uniquely Taiwanese ingredient made from cooking soy sauce with rice starch to give it body. The end result is similar in texture to oyster sauce, with a deeply umami and sweet soy flavor. Use it to glaze stir fries, marinate meats and tofu, or as a ready-to-go sauce for steamed vegetables. It makes a great sauce for dry noodle dishes or dip for danbing (Taiwanese egg crepe).

The Traditional Firewood Soy Paste is an all-purpose soy paste made with black soybeans and glutinous rice flour. This soy paste also contains mirin and licorice for a warm and anise-like flavor, a perfect complement to Chinese five-spice.

Like other Yu Ding Xing soy sauces, this is hand prepared, naturally fermented in vats for 6 months, and heated over a wood fire at the end of the fermentation process.

Tasting Notes and Usage

umami, bright, anisette

Ingredients and Instructions

Water, non-GMO black soybeans, glutinous rice flour, licorice, sea salt, sugar, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, xantham gum, alanine.

The Traditional Firewood Range is Yu Ding Xing's mid-grade range of soy sauces and pastes and does contain added flavoring, unlike their other offerings. These additives are derived naturally from the fermentation of tapioca starch, and interact with the natural glutamates present in the soy sauce to create a flavor that is distinctly Taiwan. We are comfortable with these ingredients, and even though not required to declare them in the ingredients list, we do.

Read more about these ingredients here.

420ml
Gluten-Free
Shelf stable for 2 years from printed manufacturing date. Keep refrigerated after opening.

About Yu Ding Xing

Based in Xi Luo, Taiwan, Yu Ding Xing 御鼎興 is a family-owned soy sauce brewery founded in 1947. They hand make their soy sauces and soy pastes the traditional way: sun-brewed in giant earthenware vessels (many of which have been in use for decades), then cooked slowly over a wood-burning fire.

While tradition is their foundation, under the leadership of third-generation operators Yi-Cheng and Yi-Che Hsieh, the brewery blends inherited know-how with experimental impulse and collaborative spirit to expand the boundaries of soy sauce production. Think soy sauce brewed with Taiwan-grown pineapples or soy paste mixed with local miso.

As with coffee or wine, Yu Ding Xing's ethos and practice illuminate how technique and terroir contribute to the flavor and body of a soy sauce. Learn more about their history and production process in our mini-documentary Time, Terroir, Taiwan.

SKU: YX010200

STARTING WITH THE RIGHT BEAN

Taiwanese soy sauce begins with the black soybean. Compared to yellow soybean, its higher protein content produces deeper umami flavor when fermented. Yu Ding Xing also produces soy sauce in the Chinese and Japanese traditions using a blend of soybeans.

INTRODUCING KOJI culture

After the soybeans are pressure cooked, Yu Ding Xing inoculates them with koji culture. For Taiwanese-style soy sauce, they add toasted rice bran to assist the koji with fermentation, whereas for Chinese or Japanese-style soy sauce, they add wheat.

Fermenting Flavor in Clay Vats

Following a few days of initial fermentation, the beans are rinsed, mixed with sea salt and water, then packed into a terracotta vat to ferment under the sun for at least six months. Many vats at Yu Ding Xing are decades-old.

ROASTING OVER A WOOD FIRE

The brew is extracted from the vat, pressed, then heated over a wood fire to stop the fermentation process. Although labor-intensive, slow-cooking the soy sauce over a fire enhances its flavor.