Soy Sauce Is The Unexpected Ingredient For The Best Cookies Ever

Soy sauce, an ancient and beloved condiment, seems straightforward: It just doesn't have that many moving parts. Made from fermenting soybean paste and roasted grain in brine, this apparently simple concoction has an astonishing depth and range of flavor and can be the secret weapon in all manner of dishes. If you only think of soy sauce as liquid umami salt, think again: Not only does it make a flavor-enhancing salt substitute in savory foods, but it works wonders in sweet bakes by adding richness and dimension. Are we suggesting adding soy sauce to your next chocolate chip cookie dough? You're darn right we are.

This is because, in aroma and flavor, soy sauce brings so much more to the table than plain salt. Yes, it's salty — and if you use it as a substitute for salt, put in twice as much (so, two teaspoons soy sauce for every teaspoon of salt). But there's also an umami flavor to soy sauce that pairs wonderfully with chocolate's dark earthiness and a caramelly, malty sweetness that makes it the cookie baker's secret weapon. 

Let's start with the salty part: Salt is vital in cooking for more than just its saltiness. In baking, salt helps the browning process by exercising control on fermentation and thus keeping some sugars around for the job. It also strengthens gluten proteins, allowing for a more sturdy rise. Lastly, salt has a magical ability to make every flavor around it taste more like itself. In relatively low concentrations (say, as in cookie dough), salt reduces bitterness while at the same time enhancing sweet and sour flavors. That's a lot for one ingredient to do, but soy sauce brings more than just salt to the proceedings.

Soy sauce is fermented, which helps give it a remarkable umami complexity — but without the addition of roasted grain, it would basically be miso paste. Combined with the grains, brine, and time, the result also produces aromas and flavors of smoke, caramel, and malt, with notes of sweetness, sourness, and bitterness. As you can imagine from just looking at this list, it pairs exquisitely with chocolate, which is why you should also be adding soy sauce to your brownie batter. (Don't panic if you're gluten intolerant: Soy sauce is also available gluten-free under the name tamari.)

We know that soy sauce and chocolate are besties, so start there if you're curious but unconvinced about this salt substitution: Any recipe using cocoa powder or pieces of chocolate. Beyond this, you can use soy sauce's caramel taste to play up the taste of brown butter and caramel used in other bakes. We don't think soy sauce would be out of place in a batch of peanut butter cookies, either: The two go way back in Chinese dishes like kung pao chicken and many Indonesian and Thai satay sauces.

You might be wondering if you should call your resulting bakes "soy sauce chocolate chip cookies" because its addition will be so obvious. This might be the best part about using soy sauce as a salt substitute in cookies: No one will know it's in there. Unless you're finishing your chocolate chip cookies with sea salt flakes, nobody tastes the salt either — they just taste what the salt does. When used correctly, soy sauce is even more of a generalized flavor enhancer that will blend in seamlessly.