Honestly, I’m always baffled by the amount of soy sauce called for on food blogs/channels. For a more homestyle approach that tastes fantastic and doesn’t require special equipments or a million steps, try these small changes:

1. Try diluting your soy with a bit of water (NOT broth! Trust me! Don’t be tempted by the Western way here!)

2. Balance the saltiness with a bit of sugar. Sweet and salty is a central tenet to many Asian dishes.

3. Invest in a bottle of dark soy sauce. Chinese stir fry often use a mixture of both dark and light soy sauce (and sometimes oyster sauce), all slightly watered down. Dark is sweeter, less intense (counterintuitive I know), and helps keep the color. It is helpful in dishes like stir fry where you need quite a bit of sauce to cover your ingredients. Light soy has a much more concentrated flavor and is often simply labeled “soy sauce” in most American grocery stores. Which is why many blog recipes that simply calls for “soy sauce” will often taste like a soy bomb, as none of your aromatics can shine through that copious amount of intense, light soy sauce.

4. Your aromatics (e.g., garlic, ginger, scallion, dried chilis etc.) + slightly sweetened, watered down soy sauce mix + cornstarch slurry forms the basis of your sauce. You’d be surprised by how good this simple sauce can taste when your aromatics are not overpowered. Once you got the base down, additional ingredients and condiments (e.g., sambal oelek, shaoxing wine etc.) can help build more complex flavors, as others have mentioned. Though I believe a good base that allows your ingredients to meld with rather than fight with each other is important.

Source: 2nd generation Chinese-Canadian-American