We’ve been using a fair amount of both soy sauce and sesame oil, so when I saw this on the Momofuku website: “If you’re used to grocery store Soy Sauce, Tamari and Toasted Sesame Oil, you’ve never had anything like these,” it caught my eye. Would this turn out to be true or just a marketing ploy?
The experiment got off to a rocky start, like my adventure ordering fish sauce online (maybe it’s a reminder to shop local). The cap of the toasted sesame oil got loose in transit, leaked all over everything and permeated the box with oil. This did not endear me to any of the building personnel.
Soy Sauce:
This time we paired our house soy sauce Wah Ja Shan against the Momofuku. They both smelled about the same, the Momofuku soy sauce has a good rich taste and was strong but balanced. The Wah Ja Shan was slightly stronger, a little sharper and saltier. I’d give this to Momofuku, but there wasn’t a significant difference to justify the higher price for a smaller bottle.
Tamari:
Tamari is very similar to soy sauce but without the wheat that’s in soy sauce. Trying to level the playing field the tamari I used was an organic one from Wah Ja Shan. They were both really salty and not as nuanced as the soy sauces. This time, the Wah Ja Shan tamari was the winner with a better flavor than the Momofuku which was strong and really salty. Interestingly, when you look online for the difference between soy and tamari, all the sites say that soy sauce is much saltier than tamari.
Sesame Oil:
The Momofuku toasted sesame oil was paired against a bottle of Wei Chan pure black sesame oil we got from our local Asian market. The Momofuku oil had a stronger smell of sesame with a good, clean taste of sesame and was a little lighter in color. The Wei Chan had a lighter scent and tasted slightly chemical with no strong sesame taste. Sesame oil winner—Momofuku.
My verdict:
I like the Momofuku sesame oil and soy sauce, but they’re a lot more expensive than what we’ve been getting from our local Asian market. There wasn’t enough taste difference to make me order more when this runs out.
Do you have a favorite I should know about?
