Hear it from a reliable sauce

Kikkoman launched a dark soya sauce for the Indian market after realising that Indians expect Chinese and pan-Asian dishes to have a rich, dark colour. It mimics the taste profile of the flagship Kikkoman soya but has a different colour.

- VIR SANGHVI

Rich in umami, a hint of sweetness, the sharpness from the fermentation. It is only now, after so many years, that India is finally tasting authentic soya sauce

What do you suppose is India's favourite bottled sauce? If you answered 'Tomato Ketchup', you would probably be right. I would venture to suggest that our favourite sauce after ketchup is soya sauce.

Most of us have grown up with soya sauce. Not in our home cooking but at Chinese restaurants and through Chinese takeaways. As long as you put some soya in the pan (or wok), you can claim it is Chinese food. For instance, if you make Chicken Manchurian, without soya sauce, it doesn't even taste vaguely Chinese.

Two things are worth remembering about soya sauce. The first is that its predominant flavour is a taste we call umami. I have long argued (often at tedious length) that the story of Indian restaurant food over the last 50 years is the story of our discovery of umami through butter chicken, cheesy pasta, Sino Ludhianvi dishes, pizza and sushi.

Soya sauce has played a key role in this, but here is the second thing worth remembering we haven't had genuine soya sauce in India until recently. What is real soya sauce? Is it Chinese? Or is it Japanese, given that most of us use it as a dipping sauce for sushi, and that one of the world's best-known brands of soya is the Japanese giant Kikkoman.

It's a little complicated because 'soya sauce', the name we use for the sauce, comes from shoyu, the  Japanese name. But it is a Chinese sauce, invented by the Chinese and taken to Japan by them.