The Duc Noi soybean sauce-making craft

Duc Noi village has been famous for generations for its soybean sauce-making craft. Scooping the sauce from the jar into a bowl, it is glossy, dark red, with glutinous rice and beans blended together; when eaten, people praise “sweet as sweet soup”. Anyone who has once eaten Duc Noi sauce remembers it forever.

Sauce is a common everyday food; any household can make it to use all year round—cheap, nutritious, convenient, and also very “wholesome”, and it can be used in restrictive diets very well. Sauce is an indispensable dipping sauce in many dishes that have become “favorites” of many diners: tofu dipped in sauce, black trám fruit braised and mixed with sauce, roasted veal dipped in ginger sauce....

Around June, when the spell of “rumbling thunder” has just ended, after a cool shower, when the sky clears and clouds disperse, villagers bustle about making sauce. Good sauce depends on many factors: mold, beans, water, and salt; it also depends on the sauce containers, such as jars and earthenware jars.

First of all, we must talk about water. Only good water makes good sauce. Duc Noi is a place of “favorable terrain”. The elders say that the village lies on the back of a serpent, with its head to the east and tail to the west, so it is noticeably higher than other villages in the area. With such terrain, Duc Noi’s well water is very good, clear, and “sweet”. Therefore, throughout the region people pass down a verse from generation to generation: “Duc Noi’s well water is both clear and cool; Duc Noi’s main road is sandy and easy to travel”. In the village there are many public wells at the center of each hamlet, such as Mai Well, Quang Well, Dong Well... Each time people return from working in the fields, they often scoop a bucket of water from the well and drink their fill; it cools their whole stomach. As for well waters containing iron or alum, with a murky, yellowish color, no matter how you make sauce, it can never be good. Nowadays, in modern times, there is tap water and drilled well water; the water is still crystal clear and no less delicious than well water.

The rice for making sauce is yellow-flower glutinous rice. Pick it clean, wash and rinse it thoroughly, let it drain, and steam it into sticky rice. When the sticky rice is just cooked, spread it out on a tray or bamboo sieve in an even, thin layer and let it cool. After a week, the grains of sticky rice grow yellow mold like “areca flower” is a beautiful kind of mold. If it is left “overripe” beyond the right time, or kept too hot, the mold will turn black and affect the quality of the sauce. If unfortunately, because of the weather, the mold grains turn green or black, or clump together, they must be separated into a separate jar and used to make sauce for braising fish, or mixed into cooked dishes such as fake dog meat.

For the soybeans, choose plump, evenly sized beans, rinse them with water, let them dry, then roast them in a pan in batches, about a full bowl per batch. For roasting, choose solid firewood with a low, steady flame and plenty of red coals; it is best to stir with a large bamboo chopstick, or use a thin bamboo stick split into three or four branches like a rack for stirring the beans in the pan. When the beans are cooked and evenly golden from the inside out and give off a fragrant aroma, pour them into a basket and cover them with an old cotton jacket or a cloth folded two or three times, and incubate them so they become evenly crisp. Only when the beans have completely cooled should they be taken out to be ground, split into two pieces, winnowed to remove all the skins, and the broken bean pieces separated into their own jar.

The water for making sauce must be carried in early in the morning, when the well water is still clear, and poured into jars and earthenware jars to soak the beans. After a week, add salt and at the same time add “yellow areca-flower sauce mold” to the jars, stir well; this is called “turning the sauce.” Ten days later, the delicious sauce can be eaten. Once the sauce has been eaten up, the jars must not be used to hold anything else. From time to time they are taken out and scrubbed clean inside and out, then filled with well water again for continued soaking. The last time is on the day of roasting: the jars are washed clean, turned upside down in the brick yard, and dried in the sun. The sauce is sold at Doc Market, To Market, and other markets in the region.

Today sauce is still a common food in every family. Nowadays there is no lack of dipping sauces, but Duc Noi sauce has become a commercial product, available in markets throughout the region; Duc Noi sauce is famous in the past and present, appearing in the South, the North, and even abroad.