The Major Grocery Store Soy Sauce We Would Never Buy Again

If you come from an Asian household like me, soy sauce has probably been a kitchen staple all your life. You know plenty of different types and uses for soy sauce, and you probably have your favorite, go-to brand in the same way you always buy the same brand(s) of rice. But sometimes you roll up to your local grocery store, only to find that your soy sauce of choice is tragically out of stock. If you end up in a pickle like that, don't worry; Tasting Table has your back. We've gone through the painstaking process of rating 21 different store-bought soy sauce brands for you, so you can easily reference the best and worst ones out there. And by our ranking? Kroger is the worst soy sauce brand you can get.

Our ranking was based on product packaging, flavor profiles, aroma, color, and the history of the companies in question. With the noted caveat that everyone has unique flavor preferences and that soy sauce itself is culturally important to many cuisines in tons of different ways, Kroger just came out as the bottom of the barrel for us. When you could just as easily grab a bottle of gold star Kikkoman, there isn't much point in reaching for Kroger's soy sauce, even if it might be a little cheaper.

When sampling soy sauce, you're looking for more than just salt. The fact of the matter is, soy sauce is a deeply complex ingredient with a flavor profile that doesn't stay the same even between dark and light soy sauce types within the same brand. Unfortunately, with Kroger, the main taste you get is salt. Like, in-your-face, super extreme salt. With a whopping 1,340 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon, it's no wonder you'll feel more like you're chewing on a salt lick than dunking your sushi into an umami sauce.

Worse still, the salt is just a cover-up for the underlying chemical taste. This can happen when a soy sauce brand uses chemical hydrolysis to hasten the fermentation process. Hydrochloric acid breaks down the soy beans at a much faster rate, and it's totally safe for human consumption, but the end result leaves a distinctly harsh chemical flavor on the tongue. It's so bad that brands using this type of fermentation often mix in batches of naturally fermented soy sauce to try masking the unpleasant chemical flavor. Kroger just doesn't manage to do that well, even with the heaps of salt it adds. Our taste tester even had to spit the stuff out, and if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know, I don't know what will.