Oil:
Oil is a transparent or translucent liquid obtained by pressing the seeds of the cruciferous plant Brassica (rape). Rapeseed oil is golden or brown in color and has a certain pungent smell, which is called "green smell" among the people. This gas is caused by the presence of a certain amount of mustard glycosides, but premium varieties of rapeseed do not contain this substance. It is one of the main edible oils in my country. It is mainly produced in the Yangtze River Basin, southwest and northwest places, and its output ranks first in the world.
Salt:
Salt is a ubiquitous substance in the earth's crust. Because it is easily soluble in water, it is often carried by rainwater into rivers and then into the sea. According to statistics, approximately 110 million tons of salt flow from land into the ocean every year, and the global ocean contains approximately 450 billion tons of salt.
According to natural conditions, salt can be divided into four types: sea salt, lake salt, well salt and mineral salt. The earliest method used by humans to mine salt was to scrape salt crystal blocks from dry river or lake beds with high salt content. But it didn't take long for people to invent more complex methods of producing salt.
The first commonly used salt is sea salt. Sea salt is obtained mainly by developing salt fields on the seaside where the climate and geological conditions are suitable, relying on sunlight and natural evaporation to analyze the salt. Sea salt is produced on the coasts of many parts of the world, such as China, South Korea, and India in Asia; Australia in Oceania; and the Mediterranean coast of Europe, which are major producers of sea salt.
Early residents in many areas of Africa mined salt from saline soils with high salt content. They dug many salt wells about 2 meters deep in the salt land. After the salty groundwater emerged, salt crystals precipitated through evaporation, and the well salt was mined in this way. Famous well salt producing areas in the world include Zigong in China and Weirichka in Poland.
Lakes with high salt content exist in many parts of the world. The most unique place to collect lake salt is Reteba in Senegal, Africa. The local people's method of making salt is very simple. All men, women and children from the villages around the lake take a boat and place hundreds of plastic buckets in the lake. They are arranged in a circle and look like a colorful necklace when viewed from the air. Then the scorching equatorial sun was used to dry the lake water in the bucket, leaving a layer of pure white salt at the bottom of the bucket.
The mining of mineral salt was much later than the method of using salt fields to dry salt. Polish archaeologists have excavated some tools that heated salt soil to precipitate crystallized salt. Natural salt mines exist in many places around the world, such as Iran, Iraq, the southwestern United States, Australia, and Bolivia. There are even salt domes and salt mountains in some places. For example, there are about 300 round salt domes along the Gulf Coast of the United States; there are stretching salt mountains in Pakistan.
Nowadays, in many countries and regions where it is difficult to produce enough salt based on natural conditions, some new salt production methods have been gradually developed, among which the "electrodialysis method" is the most popular. The so-called electrodialysis method uses the selective permeability of anion and cation exchange membranes under DC voltage to increase the concentration of salt in seawater by about 7 times, and then evaporates and crystallizes it to produce high-quality refined salt. This method is currently widely used in Japan and Taiwan.
Soy sauce:
Soy sauce is a liquid condiment brewed by cooking beans and wheat, fermenting them and adding salt.
Soy sauce was first invented in China. It is now known that soy sauce was commonly brewed and eaten in China during the Western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. At this time, soy sauce was not available in other countries in the world. However, considering that the manufacturing processes of soy sauce and sauce are very similar, and China invented sauce during the Zhou Dynasty, the invention of soy sauce should also be long before the Han Dynasty. If the sauce is stored for a long time, a layer of juice will appear on the surface. When people tasted the sauce, they found it tasted pretty good. So after that, the sauce-making process was improved and the sauce was specially brewed. This was probably the birth process of the earliest soy sauce.
When making soy sauce, the protein of soybeans is decomposed into amino acids through fermentation, and the glutamic acid in it reacts with salt to form sodium glutamate. Monosodium glutamate is actually today's MSG, so soy sauce has a special delicious taste.
A liquid condiment brewed from beans, wheat and bran. Reddish-brown in color, with a unique sauce aroma and delicious taste, it helps stimulate appetite. It is a traditional Chinese condiment.
Production process: The raw materials used in soy sauce are plant-based protein and starch. Plant-based protein is generally obtained from soybean cake after soybean oil extraction, or soybean meal after solvent leaching of oil. Peanut cake and broad beans are also used as substitutes. In traditional production, soybeans are mainly used. Starch raw materials are generally made of wheat and bran, and some are also shredded. Rice and corn are substituted, and flour is the main ingredient in traditional production. The raw materials are steamed and cooled, and pure cultured Aspergillus oryzae strains are added to make the koji. The koji is moved into a fermentation tank and fermented with salt water. After the fermented sauce is mature, the soy sauce is extracted by leaching. The purpose of making koji is to allow Aspergillus oryzae to fully grow and develop on the koji material, and to produce and accumulate a large amount of required enzymes, such as protease, peptidase, amylase, glutaminase, pectinase, cellulase, and hemicellulose Suzyme etc. The formation of flavor during the fermentation process utilizes the action of these enzymes. For example, protease and peptidase hydrolyze proteins into amino acids, producing umami taste; glutaminase converts extremely tasteless glutamine into umami-flavored glutamic acid; amylase hydrolyzes starch into sugar, producing sweet taste. ; Pectinase, cellulase and hemicellulase can completely rupture the cell wall, allowing protease and amylase to hydrolyze it more thoroughly. At the same time, during the koji making and fermentation processes, yeast and bacteria falling from the air also reproduce and secrete a variety of enzymes. Purely cultured lactobacilli and yeasts can also be added. An appropriate amount of lactic acid is produced by lactic acid bacteria, ethanol is produced by yeast fermentation, and various components such as alcohols, acids, aldehydes, esters, phenols, acetals, and furanones produced from raw materials and metabolites of Aspergillus, although most of them are in trace amounts. , but it can contribute to the complex aroma of soy sauce. In addition, the tyrosine in the raw protein is oxidized to produce melanin and starch. Classic mold amylase hydrolyzes it into glucose and reacts with amino acids to produce melanoidin, which makes the soy sauce produce a bright and shiny reddish-brown color. A series of extremely complex biochemical changes during the fermentation period produce umami, sweet, sour, winey, estery aromas and the salty taste of brine, finally forming soy sauce with a unique color, aroma and flavor.
A commonly used low-salt solid-state fermentation process.
Raw material processing is divided into 3 steps. ① Add water and moisturize the cake: the amount of water added should be based on the moisture content of the koji material reaching 47-50 after steaming. ② Mixing: After moistening the cake, mix it thoroughly with the crushed wheat and bran. ③ Cooking: Use a rotary steamer to steam the material under pressure (0.2MPa) to moderately denature the protein, steam and gelatinize the starch, and kill microorganisms attached to the raw material.
Making music is divided into two steps. ①Cooling inoculation: Quickly cool the clinker to 45°C, insert 0.3-0.4 of the Aspergillus oryzae strain that has been purely expanded and cultured, and mix thoroughly. ②Thick layer ventilation koji making: the inoculated koji material is sent into the koji chamber koji. Intermittent ventilation first, then continuous ventilation. The koji-making temperature is controlled at 30-32°C during the spore germination stage and at a maximum of no more than 35°C during the mycelial growth stage. During this period, turning and shoveling of songs are required. In the early stage of spore emergence, enzyme production is the most vigorous, and the product temperature should be controlled at 30-32°C.
Fermentation: Add 12-13°Be' hot salt water into the fermentation tank and mix it into the fermentation tank. The product temperature is maintained at 42-45°C for about 20 days, and the fermented fermented rice is basically mature.
Leaking oil: Heat the three oils left over from the previous production to 85°C, then put them into mature soy sauce fermented grains for soaking, so that the soy sauce is completely dissolved in it, and then pour the raw soy sauce from the false bottom of the fermentation tank. (The head oil is slowly released, and the concentration and salt content are replenished through the salt layer. The oil leaching is to separate the soy sauce and the soy sauce residue. Generally, multiple soaking is used to drain out the head oil, second oil and third oil in sequence, and the soy sauce can be soaked in cycles. Basically all the ingredients are extracted.
After processing, the soy sauce is heated to 80-85°C for sterilization, followed by preparation (blending), clarification and quality inspection to obtain a finished product that meets quality standards.
Vinegar:
There are 4 categories of raw materials and production methods of vinegar.
(1) The traditional raw materials for making vinegar in China are mainly glutinous rice and rice (japonica rice) in the south of the Yangtze River. To the north of the Yangtze River, sorghum and millet are the main ingredients. Nowadays, broken rice, corn, sweet potato, dried sweet potato, potato, and dried potato are used instead. The raw materials are first cooked, gelatinized, liquefied, and saccharified to convert the starch into sugar before use. Yeast ferments to produce ethanol, and then acetic acid is fermented under the action of acetic acid bacteria, which oxidizes ethanol to produce acetic acid.
(2) Use sugary raw materials to make vinegar. Grapes, apples, pears, peaches, persimmons, dates, tomatoes, etc. can be used to brew various fruit juice vinegars. Honey and molasses can also be used as raw materials. They all only need to go through two biochemical stages: ethanol fermentation and acetic acid fermentation.
(3) Using ethanol as raw material and adding acetic acid bacteria, it only undergoes one biochemical stage of acetic acid fermentation. For example, low-alcohol liquor or edible alcohol diluted with water can be used as raw material to make vinegar using a quick brewing method. It only takes 1 to 3 days to obtain wine vinegar.
(4) Prepare white vinegar by adding edible glacial acetic acid and water, and then add seasonings, spices, colorants, etc. to make it a vinegar with a flavor similar to that of brewed vinegar.