For context she's currently getting dragged on twitter for being weirdly racist about asian food 
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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Old Godmother? Say less queen. I am not cultured enough to differentiate b/w dark and light shoyu, I literally just got up to speed on having regular and low-sodium in the fridge, but I will look into this.
Shōyu is Japanese. Dark and light soy sauces are usually used in Chinese cooking.
Although your standard Kikkoman is a dark soy sauce by Japanese grading.
2nd time in a week I have learned something by being wrong online, truly an OP technique.
I'll be candid and tell you that I substitute different soy sauces in a pinch. Sure, it's not perfect or whatever - but my family has a decent enough home made meal on the table so that's a W to chalk up.
If I'm planning on experimenting with a specific type of cuisine for a while, I'll go and grab the right kinds of soy sauce for the recipes I'm planning to try.
the fermented soybean version is super good, too, and very tasty to the western taste. only difference in flavor is the saltiness due to the natural msg in it.
Shoyu is Japanese style soy sauce, they don’t differentiate between dark and light. But for Chinese cooking you need both, they serve very different functions. Light is for adding salt and a little soy flavour, you would use it as a full or partial replacement for salt in many dishes like stir fries and fried rice. Dark is for adding depth of umami flavour and colour - when you see braised dishes in Chinese cooking with that beautiful deep brown colour it comes from dark soy sauce. For example, a very easy and classic vegan broth for noodles can be made with just a tiny bit of dark soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and hot water.
For laoganma make sure you get the chilli bean version, it’s the original and best imo :)
Dark soy just has a deeper colour and a lighter flavour, really. A tiny bit sweeter, too. So many Chinese recipes will be like "and add dark soy for colour!" and I'm like... I'm not doing that.
So you deploy the "I ain't readin' all that but I'm happy for you, or I'm sorry that happened," but for condiments. That is interesting that it is lighter and sweeter, I certainly assumed the opposite.
As soy sauce is a fermentation, aging actually rounds out the flavour. It's got more glutemate which is good but in the modern day you can just add MSG for that.
It's like seeing a recipe call for homemade stock. Stock cubes will do fine, I'm not getting a Michelin star whilst drunk at 3 am
It has a lighter salt flavour but a much deeper umami flavour. You don’t need much, just a small glug. I actually add a little to some western dishes as well like chilli and ragu to give a depth boost
The issue is I've got MSG for that. Honestly I only really use dark soy for red braising.