3-Year Aged Soy Salt 2.8 oz / 80g

Soy salt is a product that merges modern technology, human creativity and traditional artisan-made soy sauce produced by a 254 years old family-owned Japanese brewery. This unique idea - turning liquid into flakes - originated during extended conversations between the management of Kamebishi Company with Japanese chefs who specialize in the preparation French and Italian cuisine in Japan.The chefs wanted to adopt Kamebishi's extremely high quality shoyu (soy sauce) in their preparations without making their creations being labeled "fusion cooking" or "Japanized" French or Italian dishes. The chefs were looking for some innovative ingredient made from traditional shoyu that could meet their needs. To answer to these chefs' needs, the Kamebsishi Company developed this unique product.

This light, flaky, aromatic and flavorful soy salt is a long way from a very traditional products made by the company. Kamebishi is the only company today in Japan that continues to use the time and labor intensive, 250 year-old koji preparation technique, called mushiro-koji, when brewing their soy sauce. All other brewers, large and small, have switched to more modern or highly automated methods to convert the soy beans to allow for fermentation.

In the mushiro-koji method layers of koji mold-applied soybeans and wheat are placed on layers of mats made from bamboo and rice straw and placed in a temperature and humidity controlled room. All of the processes in the room are conducted by hand by experienced knowledgeable craftsmen. In addition to the mushiro-koji method, Kamebishi relies largely on domestic organic ingredients. The fermentation process in 100 years old cedar vats takes three full years.

There is another special production feature in Kamebishi's soy sauce. Kamebishi uses a portion of its own two year-old soy sauce in the fermentation process of each batch. In most breweries spring water alone is the liquid used in the brewing process. This re-use of already aged shoyu results in enhanced and complex flavors. The resulting soy sauce is extremely flavorful with 14.5% salt content. The dry soy salt is produced from the soy sauce using the most modern drying equipment resulting in well shaped uniform salt crystals.