Soy Sauce Is The Secret Ingredient For Bakery-Worthy Brownies

Biting into a fudgy brownie can change the entire tenor of your day. Not that they're magic, per se, but their gooey, dense, chocolatey goodness does have the ability to instantly evoke a smile. So when my editor asked me to test out swapping the salt for soy sauce, I was all in. My hunch was that this odd-sounding addition just might work, as the soy sauce's savory factor could amplify the cocoa element, giving the whole equation a deeper chocolate flavor. As suspected, it brought a caramely depth to the wickedly chocolate-forward batter — worthy of any bakery. 

To test out this soy sauce hack, I tried it with a one-bowl brownie recipe and simply replaced the salt with an equal amount of soy sauce. I went with low-sodium soy sauce, as it's one of the essential pantry staples I keep on hand. If I'm being honest, as I inhaled the savory aroma of the darkly filled measuring spoon, I couldn't imagine I wouldn't be able to taste soy sauce in the baked results. Fast-forward through the tempting brownie scent wafting from the oven and the hard-to-bear cooling time, and the answer is finally right in front of me. It turns out you cannot definitively taste soy sauce! What you can taste is an overall richness that (warning) may lead to gobbling up the spoils. It's like the soy sauce acts as a booster, making the chocolate taste even more robust.

When you think about it, it's no surprise that soy sauce is somewhat of a natural swap for the salt in brownies. Soy sauce packs a pretty hefty dose of sodium: Regular soy sauce has just shy of 900 milligrams per tablespoon, which equals about the same amount of sodium as between ¼ and ½ of a teaspoon of salt. The Wegmans low-sodium sauce I used has 460 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon, which equals a little less than ¼ teaspoon of salt, but we're talking a difference of micrograms at such low measurements. I did not find the brownies tasted lacking in salt, despite the fact that I technically used less sodium than called for. You could certainly use regular soy sauce if you're worried about it, but another benefit of this hack may be the ability to use less sodium while achieving intense flavor. If you do find they lack salt, you can also top them with flaky salt.

That said, soy sauce also brings something to the party that regular salt doesn't — a deep, complex umami that reads as vaguely caramel when baked into your chocolate treats. I would be hard-pressed to say that someone could identify soy sauce as an ingredient. But the treats do taste like they're crammed with deep chocolatey flavor, and dare I say they seem a bit more special than your run-of-the-mill batch of brownies. 

If you're a traditionalist who still wants a little lift to elevate the potentially one-note chocolate brownie profile, I would say this hack is definitely worth a try. It didn't change the texture of the brownies, so it's a viable signature move. If you're a little more adventurous, there are loads of other ingredients you can add to your brownies (along with or instead of the soy sauce) for a touch of something extra, such as the warming notes of cardamom. But the soy sauce play might just be one to keep at the ready to quietly separate your brownies from the rest.