Upcycling landscape plants for non-additive soy sauce production

Upcycling landscape plants for non-additive soy sauce production

Upcycling landscape plants for non-additive soy sauce production

"Hualien No. 23" is a special species of rice which is basically only used as landscape-making because of its unique purple color. However, when "Hualien No. 23" is harvested, it will become worthless and be treated as agriculture waste. Agriforward, a social enterprise providing sustainable and circular agriculture solutions with technologies and social innovation propose a food design project trying to transform "Hualien No. 23" into valuable product. We eventually find out its advantage for fermentation, so we collaborate with a soy sauce factory and produce a unique soy sauce favor that brewed with soybean, wheat, and "Hualien No. 23". The food design project has succeeded, and “Hualien No. 23"-base soy sauce has also become one of Agriforward’s bestseller product.

Reason why we knew such special species called "Hualien No. 23" was because of a commission about landscape-making with black bear pattern. We used "Hualien No. 23" as the black fur of bear and earned a good reputation from that landscape-making project. However, at that time "Hualien No. 23" was worthless aside from its landscape-making characteristics. We found it pity to treat "Hualien No. 23" as waste, so we positively sought for a better way to make good use of it. After 2-year trial, we viewed "Hualien No. 23" as highly potential fermentation crop, which we had succeeded to brewed it into sake. Furthermore, we collaborate with a great soy sauce factory that was enthusiasm for making perfect soy sauce and insisted producing health products without artificial material addition. Referencing a special soy sauce from Japan called” usukuchi shoyu”, we tried to brew soy sauce with “Hualien No. 23". The final product impressed us a lot, with a tender taste and perfect balance of salty and umami, “Hualien No. 23"-based soy sauce now become our company’s bestseller product.