Who knows! As soon as I returned to the mountains to farm, I encountered a natural disaster.

I have a lot of yuba, dried tofu, and tofu skin in stock at home, and I can’t drink soy milk every day, and I can’t finish my goat’s milk.

Zhao Yeqing had always wanted to make soy sauce, but he didn't have much experience. He saw that the soy sauce at home had been finished long ago, and the uneaten ones had expired and could no longer be eaten.

Nowadays, the only seasonings for cooking are shrimp powder, sugar, salt, vinegar and other non-perishable ingredients.

The sugar is homemade, and there is a lot of vinegar and salt. Meishan’s house still has the inventory from the small truck that was used to deliver goods to the canteens in the countryside. Boxes and boxes.

The salt collected from the tourist area has filled the corners of the original main house. Each box contains 20 packs, and one pack weighs one kilogram, which is more than ten boxes.

Enough for two people to last a lifetime.

White vinegar comes in bags and there are several boxes, but it is no better than table salt. It is consumed quickly and will probably be used up in a few years.

Mu Xi took the bag of soybeans to the yard, spread a plastic sheet on the ground, and poured the soybeans on top to dry.

"It's okay if you don't have experience. The best thing is to experiment a few more times. The most important thing for us now is time. Judging from the current weather, it doesn't look like it will get cold. We can plant more soybeans when we run out."

If the temperature here is really the same as that in the tropical rainforest, there will no longer be a clear distinction between winter and summer, and the minimum temperature will not be lower than ten degrees. This is still a conservative estimate. When everything was normal in the past, the temperature in the tropical rainforest was generally They all float between 20 and 30 degrees.

This year’s highest temperature is around 38 degrees, so it can be inferred that the lowest temperature in winter this year will not be lower than 10 degrees.

Just plant the used soybeans directly, and you don’t have to worry about them disappearing.

Zhao Yeqing thought to himself, it's true. Anyway, if you don't try it now, you will try it later. You can't just use salt for cooking for the rest of your life.

In the past, I only knew that making soy sauce requires the use of soybean koji. This kind of soybean koji is not the soybean koji used to make Maotai-flavor liquor, but soy sauce koji essence, which is formed by direct fermentation of soybeans. In order to ensure the success rate of fermentation, it is also wrapped in Some wheat flour.

It was Zhao Yeqing's first operation, and he planned to try to make one of each type.

The first step is to soak the soybeans, which usually takes more than eight hours, until the surface of the soybeans is soaked until they become wrinkled.

While soaking the soybeans, the two of them cleaned the drying room they had built before.

This small wooden house has been basically unused since the last autumn harvest, when the rice, wheat and corn were dried. There is a stuffy smell inside after such a long absence.

After re-ventilating and drying the water vapor inside, lighting mugwort to sterilize, kill insects and dehumidify. When everything is ready, put the soaked and drained soybeans into the steamer, steam them, and then bring them in for fermentation.

The steamed soybeans are cooled and spread flat on a dustpan. If the temperature in the room is not enough, a charcoal fire must be lit to ensure the temperature is suitable.

It is necessary to ensure that the fermentation temperature is around 37 degrees. The two of them did not know this data at the beginning, and only after two failures did they sum up their experience.

Failure in this step is not troublesome. You only need to soak the soybeans again and steam them. Failure in brewing is troublesome. After all, the third step of brewing alone takes nearly four months.

The older generation can basically cook anything. In the past, there were old people in the village who made soy sauce at home and sold it at the market when they went to the market. It was just that it was not liquid soy sauce, but a solid paste. Every time you use it, When you use it, you only need to scoop out a small spoonful. It feels like soft lard, very silky.

Creamy ones are less common

The two of them don't know how to make it. It's all someone else's recipe. Most people can only make liquid soy sauce, but the two of them only know the theory and have zero actual practical experience.

The soybeans, which I originally thought were very rich, wasted almost a third of the time just in the first step of fermentation.

Each fermentation takes five to six days. If it fails, you have to start over from soaking the soybeans. However, not every failure takes five to six days. Sometimes you can see that the soybeans are spoiled in two days.

If it successfully lasts three days, you have to stir it once so that it can ferment more evenly.

If there are yellow-green Aspergillus on the surface of the fermented soybeans, it is considered a success. Pour it into a bucket and add water in proportion to it. Stir. As soon as the beans covered with yellow-green Aspergillus are poured into the bucket, the yellow-green powder will float in the air. The two of them quickly held their breath to avoid breathing it into their lungs.

After waiting for the soybeans to reabsorb water, pour them into a breathable bamboo basket, cover them with cotton gauze, and place them in the drying room to continue fermentation.

This step will take nearly eight to ten hours to complete. At this time, the soybeans are warm inside due to fermentation, and you can still smell a faint aroma of soy sauce.

Although making soy sauce is time-consuming, there are actually very few steps that require manual operations. Basically, it is just a matter of time.

After the two take time to check it every day, they can continue to follow the dogs out to graze.

January 3040, 1.

It took more than half a month for the two of them to graduate from the fermentation step and successfully move on to the next step.

This step is the most critical brewing step. It can take anywhere from four months to half a year. Even if it takes such a long time, it may not be successful. This is one of the reasons why Zhao Yeqing has always wanted to make soy sauce. Once it fails, it will be too uncomfortable. .

The brewing jar must be large enough. The two of them did not find such a large jar at home. In the past, they used clay pots made by themselves to fill water or other things. But the clay pots were made of pure adobe, with an inner layer of Mud, without a smooth glaze, is not very suitable for use as a brewing barrel.

Mu Xi drove to the tourist area, found two large brown porcelain vats fifty centimeters high, and put the two types of beans that had been successfully fermented into the vats.

It is best to use a layer of soybeans and a layer of salt, and then splash water again until the last layer is finished with salt, which can prevent the growth of bacteria in the tank.

The Mu Xi porcelain jar was placed in the yard, and Zhao Yeqing put the lid on it, calculated that it would take several months for it to be exposed to the sun, and wrote down May 5th as the unsealing time in the notebook.

It also needs to be checked during the process. Whether it is successful or not will have to be checked in a few months.

Zhao Yeqing clicked the ballpoint pen and made a clicking sound, stretched out on the rocking chair, looked at the to-do list in the notebook and said, "Don't tell me, this soy sauce birth date is quite romantic."

Mu Xi nodded and took the notebook to check if there were any other recent to-do items on it.

"Well... the wheat is almost ready to be harvested recently. I checked yesterday that the rapeseed is almost dry. Now the drying room is vacant. I'll start harvesting them tomorrow."