Noodles - Be sure to cook your noodles after everything is prepped. Stir fry the noodles right away to avoid your noodles getting soggy and breaking apart in the wok. Dark soy sauce is used in everyday Japanese cooking – in marinades, sauces, braising liquids and stir-fries. If a Japanese recipe calls for soy sauce and doesn’t specify a type, you should use koikuchi. Light Soy Sauce (Chinese): The word for light soy sauce in Chinese translates to “fresh” soy sauce, as it is traditionally made from the first pressing of fermented soybeans. It is the most commonly used sauce in Chinese cooking. If our recipes call for “soy sauce,” we mean light soy sauce! Sometimes you might want to throw in some protein or veggies to make your fried rice into a full meal. Here are some great options:

If you can not get Indonesian sweet soy sauce, you can try to substitute it with a mix of dark soy sauce with either honey or dark brown sugar.The traditional brewing process involves soaking and steaming soybeans for several hours. Then, it’s mixed with roasted and ground wheat flour and culturing mold ( Aspergillus oryzae, the yeast also used to make miso paste) to make shoyu koji. This mixture then ferments for three days. The most common types available in the U.S. are Japanese and Chinese. However, we’ve also included some common Southeast Asian kinds:

Chemical Soy Sauce (i.e. fake soy sauce): Not naturally brewed or fermented; made with a chemical process involving hydrolyzing soy protein (hard to explain what that is without a chemistry degree), corn syrup and caramel coloring. You’re more likely to find these at regular supermarkets than in Asian stores. Don’t buy them! The gorgeous reddish-brown colour of soy sauce is the result of the Maillard Reaction, which begins two or three months after brewing starts. In this reaction the sugars of the soy sauce combine with amino acids to produce melanoidin, a brown pigment which gives soy sauce its beautiful rich colour. How is soy sauce made?General rule of thumb: if it is a Chinese brand of naturally brewed soy, and it does not say “dark” on it, it is light soy! It only takes a few ingredients to make a great soy sauce fried rice. But here are some important notes. Overnight (leftover) rice There’s no question that soy sauce is salty, but it is lower in sodium than table salt. A little goes a long way, so use sparing. How to Store Before Opening Sesame oil is super essential for basically every single dish. When it’s a stir-fry, we always add it at the end when we turn the heat off.”