The Ink-Pot and the Palette

While it certainly wouldn't hurt me to cut down on salt, I don't think salt is the problem--'cause if it were, I'd be having these suckers twice a day.

I'm pretty sure it's the MSG found in less-than-stellar quality soy sauce. Natural fermenting creates free glutamic acid, which is the key component of the umami taste that soy sauce embodies. When industrial food production doesn't have time for natural fermenting, the free glutamic acids are added into the product in an artificial form ("hyrdolized vegetable protein" is one of the names for it, but it's all essentially MSG).

The trick is to find natural, barrel-fermented soy sauce, at probably ten times the price of the cheap stuff. I thought I'd solved this problem, but labeling laws in China may not be quite all one would desire, and apparently I screwed up with the bottle I just opened.

The hunt is on.