Our Guide to Vegan Soy Sauce and Top Meal Options

Have you ever wondered is soy sauce vegan? Or perhaps what recipes you could make if you could find a vegan-friendly soy sauce brand? Well, we would like to answer those questions for you, and this is our guide to vegan soy sauce and our top meal options for you to cook up. We will discuss what traditional soy sauce is made from and what animal-derived ingredients you might find in certain soy sauce brands. We’re also excited to share our favourite easy vegan recipes which use a soy sauce suitable for a vegan diet as a main ingredient, bringing its signature umami flavor to some of our favourite dishes.

What is Soy Sauce Made From?

A quick education for you then, starting with the ingredients from which traditional soy sauce products are made. This is a short list, but the basic ingredients you can expect to find are soy beans, wheat, salt and water. Each of these ingredients is important for its unique reasons, and all contribute to the taste of the soy sauce, making the selection and quality of each crucial to a delicious sauce.

Breaking each ingredient down briefly: the soybeans are the core ingredient and the base for the soy sauce. The soy beans are soaked in water, after which they are steamed at a high temperature. They’re then blended with toasted wheat, giving the soy sauce its unique aroma and sweetness.

It’s at this point some secondary ingredients begin to become introduced. This begins with some microorganisms used to kick off the fermentation process. Yes, that’s right, much like an alcohol fermentation is part of soy sauce brewing process.

So where does salt come into the making of soy sauce then? Salt is diluted in water to make brine, and this brine is then mixed with the soy beans to control the fermentation process and also add that familiar salty taste we all love to the soy sauce.

What Animal Products are in Soy Sauce?

What animal products can you find in the ingredient list for soy sauce? We’re going to start by talking about three vegan soy sauces that we’ve got in our kitchen cupboard that use only plant-based ingredients. Starting with one of our favourite brands of soy sauce ‘Kikkoman Soy Sauce‘ which is a regular soy sauce that lists these ingredients: water, soybeans, wheat, salt. We also have a bottle of ‘Blue Dragon‘ dark soy sauce which lists a few more ingredients including acidity regulators and preservatives, but still includes that all-important vegan stamp on the bottle. Finally, we also have a bottle of ‘Yutaka Reduced Salt Soy Sauce‘, which is a light soy sauce made from water, soybeans, salt, rice and alcohol.

If however, you take another bottle of soy sauce off the shelf, such as ‘Amoy Light Soy Sauce’ you’ll see that it contains a couple of flavor enhancers called E631 and E627. These are some of the non-vegan ingredients that you have to watch out for if you adhere to a plant-based diet.

The flavour enhancer E631 can contain fish products, or pig products and is supposed to add an umami flavour to a product. It can be made using a production process (fermentation) that does not use any animal ingredients, but we as the consumer cannot know that. The other flavour enhancer we’ve mentioned is E627, which contains no animal products and is also known as buffered vinegar. It is used as a preservative and does not affect the flavor aroma of the food it’s added to.

It doesn’t take very long after googling the words soy sauce to realise that there are many different types of soy sauce. You’ll find dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, Japanese soy sauce, white soy sauce, reduced salt soy sauce and a whole load of other varieties of soy sauce. But is there a type of soy sauce which is vegan?

Is Soy Sauce Vegan

Traditionally soy sauce is vegan. As we’ve discussed the fundamental ingredients that soy sauce is made from are soybeans, wheat, salt and water, and that means this is one more vegan condiment you can add to your plant-based pantry. That being said, you do still need to check the labels on any bottle you pick up off the shelf. Unfortunately, some brands aren’t suitable for you and your vegan lifestyle, and that’s probably down to additives like the flavour enhancer E631.

You do not have to splash out on specialty soy sauces to find the best vegan soy sauce and avoid buying a brand which uses additives and preservatives. You can find great-value soy sauce varieties with a great depth of flavor and natural ingredients in most stores. Our favourite vegan soy sauce is Kikkoman’s Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce, its rich flavor, pure ingredients and total lack of additives make it a great option for your Asian dishes.

Vegan Recipes Using Soy Sauce

So what vegan dishes can you make with your favourite new vegan soy sauce? You are in luck as we have some great choices for you. For a tasty Japanese-inspired dish we have an easy plant-based shoyu ramen dish. This ramen dish is made using a dashi shoyu broth, in which soy sauce is a fundamental ingredient, and would be a perfect use of a Japanese variety such as our favourite Kikkoman’s soy sauce.

Just because soy sauce is an Asian savory condiment doesn’t mean that it can’t be used in a European dish. That is exactly what we’ve done, when using it to bring some rich umami flavours to our recipe for pan-fried lions mane steak tips. In this recipe we take the unusual but utterly delicious lion’s mane mushroom and sear it in a bold red wine jus. This dish is mouthwatering and is a fantastic way to use a great sauce to gain a richer flavour.

Returning to another Asian-style dish, we have also made a Chinese-inspired black bean sauce. This is an easy recipe with a complex range of flavours using fermented black beans, aromatics, rice vinegar and soy sauce to create a rich sauce perfect for a plant-based version of the classic beef in black bean sauce with green peppers dish. Don’t take out, stay in and try out this recipe.

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