What is shoyu tare?

Tare means sauce or seasoning in Japanese. Ramen cooks use the word for the concentrate that goes in the bottom of the bowl and gives the unsalted broth its salt and character. Shoyu tare is built on soy sauce, shio tare on salt, miso tare on miso paste. The origin and principle of the three types are covered in the article Ramen tare.

The right ingredients

• Soy sauce: Use Japanese soy sauce (koikuchi shoyu). It brings salt and a malty sweetness. Chinese dark soy sauce is thicker, colors heavily and tastes of caramel. The article light and dark soy sauce compares the types.
• Mirin: Real hon-mirin contains around 14% alcohol and gives gloss and mild sweetness. Mirin-style seasoning from the supermarket tastes sweeter, so use a teaspoon less sugar.
• Sake: An inexpensive cooking sake is enough. Without sake, use the same amount of water, though the tare then tastes flatter.
• Kombu and katsuobushi: Both supply umami, the depth that soy sauce alone lacks. You can buy katsuobushi as loose flakes in a bag and kombu as dried sheets at an Asian grocery store.

How to get the tare right

Keep the heat low

Once the kombu and katsuobushi are in the pot, the tare should only barely simmer. If it boils hard, the kombu turns slimy and bitter, and the soy sauce reduces too much. Small bubbles at the edge of the pot are enough.

Taste it with broth

On its own the tare tastes too salty, as it should. To test it, stir 2 tsp of tare into 100 ml hot broth. If the soup tastes flat, add more; if it scratches your throat, use less. For a bowl with 350 to 400 ml of broth you need 30 to 40 ml of tare, so 2 to 3 tbsp.

Freeze it in portions

Pour the cooled tare into an ice cube tray with large wells. One cube of about 30 ml is enough for a bowl of ramen. In the freezer the tare keeps for up to three months, and you thaw only one portion at a time.

Common mistakes

• Salted broth: The tare brings the salt. If you salt the broth beforehand, the bowl tastes too salty.
• Cooked too long: The tare reduces too far, and the soy sauce picks up a burnt note.
• Flakes squeezed too hard: Light pressure is enough. If you press firmly, cloudy matter and a fishy taste get into the tare.
• Cold bowls: Rinse the bowls with hot water before the tare and broth go in. Otherwise the soup cools too fast at the table.

Shoyu tare for ramen, yakitori and more

With a clear chicken broth like Tori Chintan, the tare makes a classic Tokyo-style shoyu ramen. You can find a full recipe with toppings at Shoyu Ramen with Chicken Chashu. You can mix leftover braising liquid from the chashu into the tare, which gives the seasoning a meaty tone.

For yakitori, simmer the tare further until it runs off the spoon like syrup, and brush it onto the skewers during the last minutes of grilling. A thicker, sweeter glaze for chicken skewers has its own recipe: Yakitori tare. A spoonful of shoyu tare also goes well in fried rice or over blanched spinach with toasted sesame.