Heart Behind Us

In every household, soya sauce has taken a significant role. In supermarkets and wet markets, you can quickly get a bottle of light or dark soya sauce at $2.00 to $4.00. But nowadays not many people know the process of manufacturing the soya sauce.

Kwong Woh Hing Sauce Factory, who has 60 years of experience in manufacturing soya sauce would like to highlight the process of the pure light and dark soya sauce in its naturally brewed and using the most traditional method. Firstly, we will have to choose the top grade soya beans. Wash it with water, put them into the steamer to steam until the beans are cooked. The reason for using the steamer is to maintain the nutrients of the beans, thus incurring a higher cost. When the beans are cooked, our experienced workers will have to mix the beans with wheat flour and yeast together.

This procedure has to be done manually, the reason being the machines will crush the beans to unnecessary smaller pieces that affect the quality of the seeds. After the beans have been mixed, they will be left into a room to ferment for four days. After the beans have been fermented, we will transfer them into big containers or tanks, add some salt water and leave them under the sun. From the photos, you can see that we have put in 80% of beans and 20% of salt water. Light soya sauce will take one year to the sun. The longer you expose to the sun, the more fragrant the beans will be. After a year, the salt water will evaporate about 5 to 6%. What is left will be 15% of bean water – the cost is very high as the bean water is very concentrated and high in protein. After one year we will take 15% of pure bean water and add rock sugar to make our light soya sauce.

Eventually, we will pour the pure bean water into the tanks (as you can see in the photos) and sun it for another four months. The bean water will evaporate further, and the texture will get thicker than we use it to make our dark soya sauce. When the dark soya sauce is extracted out of the tank, you can see some crystal-like cubes sticking at the side of the tank. They are the salt that is in the bean water previously, so our soya sauce is all not salty and yet tasty. They are all very high in nutritional value.

Let us pause and think for a moment: When you go to the market to buy vegetables, meat and fish, you won’t mind paying a higher price for them if they are fresh. As for sauces and seasonings, the taste of your food will be affected if you do not use a good one. In our modern context, many people are very busy and highly committed in their work that they rarely have time to dine at home. The food that you input into your stomach will affect your health directly. Therefore it is critical to have good light and dark soya sauce at home when you are cooking for your family. When you prepare for your loved ones, you have to be very selective in the food and seasonings used.

Many people are getting more health conscious nowadays, yet they cannot find a company who can produce a good quality of light and dark soya sauce. You can’t see our products over the counters in the supermarkets and wet markets, and yet we have survived for more than 60 years – without having to advertise ourselves. The secret lies in the quality of our products!