Soy-free soy sauce

I've mentioned that i have a food allergy, and until last week it was largely an annoyance- i shouldn't eat it and avoided it, but it wasn't life threatening, and little things here and there (like bread) we didn't worry about. My epipen expired 6 months ago, so naturally NOW i would start having anaphylactic reactions. One of the foods i didn't used to worry about was soy-sauce (because soy-sauce is heavily fermented, fermentation breaks apart protein bonds, the proteins are what your body attacks, yada yada), but i had an anaphylactic reaction to something containing "soy sauce" (wasabi almonds. it's possible they used a powdered substitute that is not quite the same thing as soysauce, but either way- they tried to kill me).

I've eaten completely soy-free (i've eaten completely allergen free and unprocessed. lot of work let me tell you) in the past, and since I LOVE asian food, i'd thought i'd share a couple of my "soy-free" tricks for cooking. There are lots of soy-free products you can buy, but i'm talking strictly in the kitchen here. Anything you make by hand, especially without preservatives, is not going to have a super long shelf life, so when you need 2 TBS of something for a recipe, you shouldn't have to spend 20 minutes boiling crap to get a reasonable substitution.

soy-sauce: soy sauce is basically just salty, so i substitute it with salt water. i like to use black truffle salt, i just feel like it gives it that something extra that closes the gap in flavor, and my husband agrees, it comes out pretty darn close. I do roughly a 1:4 salt to water ratio (1t salt to 2T water). It isn't the right color (obviously), but it's a great substitute on flavor. There are recipes out there with vinegar and molasses; personally, i think they're just trying too hard.

hoisin sauce: hoisin is a sweet asian sauce filled with spices and soy sauce. there are lots of recipes on the internet, but a quick substitute is buckwheat honey (or manuka, or another dark pungent honey) and peanut butter. Those dark honeys just have a completely different flavor profile than the traditional golden honeys most of us are accustomed to. I actually don't like the dark honeys for eating, but as a substiture for hoisin, dark honey and peanutbutter is right on. You can use garlic and cayenne powders to round out the flavor, but buckwheat honey alone gets really close and adding the peanut butter is almost indecipherable. (if you have a peanut allergy, i still totally recommend the dark honey and garlic).

mayonnaise: There are soy-free mayo's out there, they cost a lot, and if you really love mayo, you can splurge. I actually never liked mayo (certainly not enough to make it myself) even before i couldn't eat it, but i like some things that are made WITH mayo-like deviled eggs and pasta salad. Most of the time, i substitute greek yogurt or sour cream. avocado or just plain olive oil are also good substitutes depending on the dish. For coleslaw, i make an asian slaw with sesame oil, but there are lots of vinegar based slaw recipes out there that are super delicious.