The secret to making Nam Dan soy sauce

(Baonghean.vn) - 'Whoever comes back to eat Thanh Chuong pickles/ Stop by to taste Nam Dan soy sauce'. Fragrant, sweet and delicious soy sauce with 3 layers is a specialty of Nam Dan hometown. To make this honey-like dipping sauce, we cannot forget the mold making step - the first step among the steps of salting mold, roasting and soaking beans and soy sauce.

Soy sauce is one of the famous traditional products of Nam Dan, bringing income to many people here. With the desire to preserve and develop the profession and at the same time create more jobs, Nam Dan district organized a soy sauce making class for 28 women who are in the group of people with unstable jobs, poor households and people with disabilities.

The class meets twice a week for 1 month, including 4 theory sessions and 4 practice sessions. In the class, students are guided enthusiastically by Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong, an experienced and certified teacher of soy sauce making, through the steps and secrets to making a delicious bottle of soy sauce.

According to Ms. Hong, molding is an equally important step in the process of making soy sauce. The raw material for molding must be large, round glutinous rice. Because glutinous rice is easy to cook when cooked, the starch can quickly convert into sugar.

The sticky rice will be moldy and sprayed with a layer of strong green tea before being covered with a thick layer of leaves, tied tightly and left to ferment in a sealed chamber.

Usually, longan leaves are chosen for covering because of their good heat retention ability.

Since the mold incubation begins, mold inspection and turning is done every 3 days. At that time, people will cut the ropes. Students in a soy sauce making class in Nam Dan are practicing mold incubation.

After 7 days, the mold is ripe. At this time, the mold is evenly yellow-red in color, which means it has reached the standard and will be crushed and dried in the sun. However, if the mold appears white, which means it has not reached the standard, it will affect the quality of the soy sauce.

The finished product of the mold fermentation process. The mold is crushed into a honey-yellow powder with a sweet taste from glutinous rice and is used to make soy sauce.

It can be said that the molding step is one of the important steps that determines the production of a bottle of 3-layer soy sauce with the quality of honey, true to the Nam Dan soy sauce brand.

Chu Thanh