Medium-thick sauce (Torii sauce)

Medium-thick sauce (Torii sauce)

It is a lightly sweet and rich sauce. It is based on Worcestershire sauce, with the sweetness of apples and the thickness of rice flour added. When poured over fried foods, it mixes with the fat in the batter to create a gentle sweetness. It is called a medium-thick sauce because it has a thickness somewhere between Worcestershire sauce and a thick sauce (tonkatsu sauce).

Capacity: 200ml

Ingredients: vegetables and fruits (onions (domestic), apples, tomatoes, carrots, garlic), sugar, Worcestershire sauce, brewed vinegar, salt, soy sauce (contains soybeans and wheat), starch, spices, yeast extract, kelp stock, bonito stock

Shokunin Shoyu No. 3095

The sauce is based on a wooden barrel.

The base of Nakano Sauce is Worcestershire sauce that has been aged in a wooden barrel. Once the preparation is complete, the Worcestershire sauce is placed in this barrel. Then, the raw material for Nakano Sauce is drawn out again. It is like a sauce that is topped off, and it apparently spends an average of two months in this barrel between the time it is poured in and the time it is removed.

Apples are then added to give it a fruity sweetness, and rice flour is added to give it a unique thickness.

The sauce is made from vinegar and vegetables.

The ingredients of the sauce are surprisingly unknown. President Torii Daisuke explains, "Soy sauce adds saltiness and umami, and sauce adds sourness and umami." The source of sourness is vinegar, and the source of umami is vegetables. The sauce is made by adding spices to these ingredients.

Therefore, the Worcestershire sauce that is the base of Chuno Sauce is made with 100% domestic vegetables and carefully-produced vinegar. The vegetables used are sourced from familiar producers and neighboring areas as much as possible.

The apples used in the Nakano sauce are carefully selected from Nagano Prefecture. The sweetness is adjusted and blended according to the season and the condition of the apples that year. It has a sweet and slightly sour taste, making it a perfect match for fries. When mixed with the fat in the batter, it gives it a light yet sweet taste.

The vinegar is also homemade

We have been brewing our own vinegar for over 30 years. We extract alcohol from sake lees from ginjo sake produced at a local brewery, then use the static fermentation method to grow acetic acid bacteria and turn it into vinegar over a period of two months.

Vinegar and spices have different optimum temperatures

Another feature is the use of spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves that bring out the sweetness. Instead of powdering the spices and mixing them, they are placed in a straining bag in their original or coarsely ground form and then soaked in the sauce, allowing only the aroma to be dissolved into the sauce.

Depending on the type of spice, some can withstand heat, while others cannot, so the temperature and timing of adding them are important. By dividing the temperature range into two stages and allowing the heat-sensitive spices to cool before adding them, only the desired aroma is transferred to the sauce.

The idea is to put spices in a bag and let them steep, but Torii explained, "It might be easier to understand if you imagine tea brewed in a teapot and powdered tea. Tea brewed in a teapot doesn't have much impact, but it goes down smoothly. Powdered tea has a straightforward taste, but it still has a bitter aftertaste."