Sweet soy sauce

Sweet soy sauce (Indonesian: kecap manis) is an Indonesian sweetened aromatic soy sauce, which has dark colour and a thick syroupy consistency and a unique, pronounced, sweet and somewhat molasses-like flavour due to generous addition of palm sugar.Kecap manis is widely used with satay. It is similar, though finer in flavor, than Chinese sweet bean sauce (tianmianjiang). It is by far, the most popular type of soy sauce employed in Indonesian cuisine, accounts for an estimated 90 percent of the nation's total soy sauce production.

Ingredients

Compared to mildly salty regular soy sauce, the sweet soy sauce slightly has thicker consistency and tastes much sweeter. This condiment is made from a fermented paste of boiled black soybeans, roasted grain, salt, water and Aspergillus wentii molds, added with palm sugar. The strong sweet taste is contributed by a generous amount of palm sugar — it might contain up to 50 percent gula merah or gula jawa (palm sugar jaggery). Indonesian sweet soy sauce is often enrichen with spices, including star anise, cinnamon, black pepper, coriander and clove.