Miso

In its most basic form, miso is a fermented soya bean paste that has been used in Japan for thousands of years. It’s so easy to make that many Japanese people make it themselves in their kitchens: just soak the beans, boil them quickly, crush them and inoculate them with a mixture of sea salt and a noble mould that every lover of Japanese cuisine should know about.

Miso is fermented by Japan’s ‘national fungus’, Aspergillus oryzae, better known as ‘koji’. Koji is also used to make sake, soy sauce, rice vinegar, etc. Depending on the strain of koji used, the grains and other ingredients added to the mixture, the temperature and duration of fermentation (from a few days to several years), and even the season, you can get completely different types of miso.

There is white miso, which is mild and not very fermented, red miso, which is more full-bodied, and black miso, which is particularly fermented. A more detailed taxonomy classifies them according to the grains from which they are made, in addition to soya: wheat, rice, barley, lentils, azuki beans, and so on. The combinations are endless and often characteristic of a region or even a city. If you’re ever in Nagoya, in the Japanese Alps, we can’t recommend enough tasting its famous red miso, fermented for three years…