Japanese food is popular throughout the world and a big part of the reason many people chose to visit. Even if you are yet to travel to Japan but have eaten Japanese food before, then you’ve almost certainly encountered “miso” – one of the main ingredients of Japanese cooking. Used as a staple of any Japanese kitchen, whether it be in a home or restaurant, miso is used as the base of many dishes and sauces and to marinate, pickle and season even more! Produced throughout Japan, Nagano Prefecture most famous for its distinctive Shinshu Miso. With many breweries and stores selling miso dotted throughout Matsumoto City, it’s the ideal place to delve further into Japan’s celebrated food culture.
Simple to Make: You Only Need 3 Ingredients
The ingredients required to make miso are simple. There are only three - soybeans, salt and fermented rice, known as “koji” in Japanese. Found in any supermarket in Japan, these three ingredients can be combined at home to produce a miso according to your own taste preferences. Just take 1 kilogram of soybeans and combine with another kilogram of koij and 500 grams of salt, and once fermented you will have around 4 kilograms of self-made miso.
The Only Other Thing You Need is Time
The first step of making miso is to soak the soybeans in water, best left overnight to soften fully before boiling. Once boiled, allow the soybeans to cool to around 40 to 45 degrees and while cooling, mix the salt and koji in a separate bowl.
Mash the soybeans adding the salt and koji mix as you do so. As you mash the beans, salt and koji, the texture will gradually smooth to form a paste, which you can make smoother by adding a touch of boiled water. Some people choose not to fully mash the beans, leaving remnants of them as a crunchier paste.
Once satisfied with the texture, it’s time to transfer it to the container in which it will ferment. This stage is just as important as you need to make sure the container is sterile, free of any unwanted bacteria or mold. To do so, wipe the interior clean with alcohol solution. When transferring the paste, it’s also important not to leave air pockets within, so do so in small portions and make sure to press them down tightly.
It’s best to cover the paste with kitchen wrap to limit contact with air and then seal the container as tightly as possible. Then it’s just a matter of waiting, at least six months or much, much longer should you wish to. Late-autumn and early-spring are considered the best times to make miso as the cooler weather limits microorganisms that are floating in the air or on surfaces, while there’s enough warmth to encourage the fermentation to begin. It really is as easy as that.
Join Our Local Miso Brewery Tour & Traditional Lunch Tour
In theory it’s easy but producing high quality miso takes skill. Nagano Prefecture is Japan’s largest producer of miso – accounting for around 10% of the country’s breweries but over 50% of total miso production – making it the ideal place to learn more. Our “Local Miso Brewery Tour & Traditional Lunch” is a great way to do just that, as we take you to the oldest and most celebrated miso brewery in Matsumoto. Available every day, the tour includes a tour of the brewery – which continues to use traditional methods to this day – and a miso-based lunch at the brewery’s restaurant.
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