Stop Paying for Japanese Salad Dressings.

Soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin.

Repeat after me - soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin.

1 part shoyu, 1 part komezu, 1 part mirin.

Bring everything in a pot under medium heat until it comes to a boil, remove from heat, cool to room temperature, refrigerate indefinitely.

That's it, that's how you make sanbaizu (three cup vinegar), Japanese salad dressing.

Say it again: soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin.

Taste it.
If it's too salty, reduce the soy sauce.
Too much acidity? Take away some of the vinegar.

Make salads with it. Cucumbers chunks, julienned carrots, celery, thinly sliced radish. Leftover salmon, fried mackerel, prawns, octopus, crabmeat, vermicelli.

Add a cup of stock/dashi and you have stock for those cold noodles for summer.

If you struggle to count to three, you can make nihaizu (two cup vinegar) with only soy sauce and rice vinegar.

The takeaway here is the RICE vinegar.

There's the basic one, and then there's 'pure' rice vinegar, and then organic rice vinegar. I don't care, if you see 米 and 酢, you're good.

Like their whiskey, the Japanese rice vinegar is milder and more refined than your normal vinegar. Less metallic zinc, more wanky single-origin coffee tasting notes.

You can try red/white wine vinegar, malt vinegar, zhenjiang vinegar, balsamico but it will dramatically alter the profile.

Nothing wrong with it, but in my household, when my wife says 'nothing's wrong, it's fine', my truth indicator usually points the other way and gives out a 'baw baw' sound.

Not Japanese rice vinegar? Not Japanese salad anymore.
Omae wa mou shindeiru.

Here's a pro tip: bring your sanbaizu to a boil again, heat off, and add a handful (5-10g) of bonito flakes.
Let seep for 30 seconds, and strain.

Now you have Tosazu (土佐酢).

The people from the Tosa island claimed this 4-ingredient dressing, stamping it with their name. I find it hard to believe this island was the first to ever add bonito flakes into their vinegar, but hey, if Singapore can claim Bah Kut Teh then anything can happen, right?

Once, only once, I included a carrot and celery salad with Tosazu in the wife's bento. She still remembers it to this day, 10 years later.

She came home and asked what was my secret.

I told her it was 'love', but of course, the real secret is the predictability of the Japanese palette.

You want to make Japanese food to remind the Japanese of Japan?
Use seasoning from Japan. (Don't forget to add some sugar.)

I'm not saying Japanese restaurants are ripping you off, but the next time you see 'Japanese salad dressing' on the menu going for thirty-odd bucks, remember:

Soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin.

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Time is a flat dumpling skin.

By now if you're not experiencing Déjà vu, you must be new here.

12 months ago, I sat at this exact same spot, with the exact same autumn view from my window, also under COVID lockdown, and wrote Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin. https://www.soysaucesugarmirin.com/shop

Not everything is the same though.
My 'sugar' has now matured into 'rice vinegar'.

If these 12 months have taught me anything, is that we shouldn't take anything for granted.

Sure, soy sauce, sugar, mirin sound easy, but they are also a pain in the ass, not to mention time-consuming to make. There're Youtube or Eater videos out there on the making of soy sauce or miso or sake, I'm sure. We should be mindblown to think we can now share the same bottle of soy sauce as a family in Chiba.

The miso you poo-pooed? Man, it took some factory 12 months to ferment it, not to mentioned dinosaurs died millions of years ago to make fuel to power ships and planes to bring the miso to your local supermarket, into your pantry.

I'm not that good a cook; I just have access to good ingredients.
If I can learn to do it, you can learn to do it.

I'd imagine 20 years ago, we had what, expired Lee Kum Kee soy sauce, and sherry wine to substitute mirin? Nowadays, you have a variation of premium, organic products, imported or made locally, delivered by drones.

What a time to be alive.

20 years ago, I probably had to ask someone who knew someone who knew someone to look at a piece of napkin and weigh in if it's worth writing a manuscript on a typewriter to approach an agent to approach a publisher to make a book.

I'd probably have to be private-ed, rich, handsome, tall, and white OR addicted to drugs, living a hard life, working in an actual kitchen with 8 kids at home, to be considered.

Today I tickle the keyboards (sometimes the phone) and print books by demand, cutting through all the middlemen, bureaucracy and connect directly with 300k people, local and international, who suffered the same mental abuse I call being an Asian home cook.

In 9 months I have sold over 950 copies of Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin.

That's a rookie number compared to the viewers of your cousin's TikTok video of a twerking sock puppet.

But, I also tell my daughter 'comparison is the thief of joy', so I'm grabbing this 'self-published-hack' trophy to show her because the alternative is being an overweight deadbeat dad who won't let her eat ice cream all the time.

I'm not that good a writer; I just have access to the right tools for the right audience.
If I can learn to do it, you can learn to do it.

The biggest, BIGGEST surprise of all is how I met more people, made more friends, in the last 12 pandemic months compared to the previous 10 years of my life.

And most of them didn't find me repulsive.

What a time to be alive.

I thank the emulsification of all my unresolved childhood traumas, the therapy from cooking, the stress of parenthood, all woven into a cotton candy ball of skrillex in my head.

Also, I thank you for reading.