How is Soy Sauce Made?

Soy sauce is a valuable part of much of the food at our Bellevue Japanese restaurant.  You dip your sushi in it, you sprinkle it on your rice, and it’s even a chief ingredient in teriyaki sauce.  But where does soy sauce come from?

 

  • The first part of the process is to soak and steam the soybeans, then mix these beans with roasted grains of wheat.

  • After this, the manufacturer wants to encourage koji mold to grow in the mix.  This breaks down the soy’s proteins and the wheat’s carbohydrates into a substance they call shoyu koji.  This process takes about three days.

  • This shoyu koji is then mixed with salt water to ferment and age for a few months.

  • After the fermentation process, the shoyu koji has turned into a thick mash.  This mash is pressed and strained through a cloth to remove the fluid.  This fluid is called “raw” soy sauce.

  • Finally, the raw soy sauce is cooked so as to pasteurize the mixture and bring an end to the chemical reactions, stabilizing the soy sauce.  Now it is ready to be bottled, sold, and enjoyed!

Amaebi: the Sweet Shrimp

At Flo’s Japanese restaurant in Bellevue, you can enjoy a delicious amaebi nigiri sushi as part of your authentic Japanese dining experience. The amaebi, commonly known in English as the sweet shrimp or spot prawn, represents an excellent sushi choice both in terms of taste and environmental sustainability.

Taste the Sweetness of Amaebi

What makes the amaebi special is that it is the only shrimp that is largely accepted as being best served raw. This is because it has a sweet taste that can be easily destroyed in the cooking process. Additionally, they are known to be a fertile species reproducing abundantly in the Canadian Pacific; their populations are strong enough such that Seafood Watch rates them as a “best choice”. Come and indulge in a delicious and guilt-free amaebi nigiri at Flo Restaurant tonight!

Sake: Wine or Beer?

There’s nothing like a good sake. That’s why we stock our Japanese restaurant in Bellevue with a wide assortment of bottles, ready to make every night special with another take on the brew’s distinct, satisfying taste.

But what is sake, exactly?

Though liquors like sake are frequently referred to as “rice wine”, there is some ambiguity as to whether it is more of a wine or a beer. On one hand, being made from a fermented grain puts it in league with the beer family. It also doesn’t benefit from being aged the way many wines do, and is best enjoyed within as little as a year of bottling. On the other hand, its non-carbonated nature and its taste make it feel more like a wine, and its average alcoholic content of 17% is more akin to the wine family.

In the end, it’s probably best to accept that the labels we put on our drinks are not exactly hard and fast. Sake is part of a unique phenomenon all its own, and discussing the particulars of this phenomenon is best left to the spirit-addled minds of barstool philosophers. Should you ever feel the need to join in the debate, of course, you’re always free to take a seat and grab a glass at Flo’s Sake Bar!

How Sake is Made

At our Bellevue Japanese restaurant, there’s no better drink to accompany your sushi than a glass of real Japanese sake. But what brings the sake to our tables? From the rice grains to your glass, the production of Japan’s famous rice wine is a long and complex one:

  • First, the rice is milled and cleaned. This rice then needs to be steamed to achieve an appropriate consistency to be properly fermented. Half of this steamed rice is placed in a large fat and the other half is put aside to create the starter.
  • The rice set aside for the starter is seeded with a species of mold known as koji. This mold starts the fermentation process, converting the starches of the rice into sugars. This process lasts between three and four days.
  • When the koji starter is ready, it is mixed with the remaining rice. This is then combined with water and yeast. The resulting mixture then continues to ferment for the next few weeks.
  • Once the brewer deems the mixture to be ready, it is pressed to remove the fluids. This fluid is filtered and pasteurized.
  • The sake is aged about six months, then distilled with water to achieve the desired level of alcohol by volume. At this point, it is ready to be bottled, sold, and enjoyed!