Oyster sauce salt, should be added to the sauce, since the oysters should provide all the savoury flavour. However, this method is prohibitively expensive. Many modern oyster sauces are thickened with cornstarch, flavoured with oyster essence or extract and darkened with caramel. Vegetarian oyster sauce prepared from mushrooms, often oyster mushrooms or shiitake mushrooms, is also popular and generally lower in price. It may contain more taste enhancers if less mushroom extract is used to reduce costs. Most of the oyster sauces available on the market contain added monosodium glutamate (MSG). In recent years MSG-free varieties can also be found. The taste
Suminoe oyster Suminoe oyster The Suminoe oyster ("Magallana ariakensis"), is a species of true oyster which inhabits intertidal hard grounds and substrate, as well as muddy creeks of warm estuaries throughout the western Pacific. It is large and flat in appearance and almost identical in gross morphology to "Crassostrea virginica". Similar to other oysters, "Crassostrea ariakensis" is a bivalve mollusk with a hard calcium-carbonaceous shell. The hard shell provides protection from predation. The Suminoe oyster can reach shell heights of 76 mm within 2 years post-settlement. Growth and setting of Suminoe oyster larva were most successful at salinities of 15 to 20