miso fermentation

back in february of this year, i went to a miso workshop run by a friend of a friend & prepped what would become a jar of miso.

you can get miso at the supermarket very easily & i'd never made miso before, but it turns out it isn't very difficult to make. it's just that it takes time.

i think fermentation is really cool. there's something wonderful about how something can start off as one thing & with time turn into something completely different but also good. it's a bit scary because you don't know how things will turn out until afterwards, but i think that's also part of the fun. maybe it won't turn out exactly how you want it to, but that could be an exciting revelation too.

i only let the jar ferment for six months or so, which is on the short end for miso (i think), so the flavour is not as strong as most miso i get from the supermarket.

something i didn't know was that if you make your own miso, it can create a byproduct. i'd never ever heard of it before, so when i picked up the jar & saw a dark brown liquid on the top, i panicked a little, thinking something might have gone terribly wrong!

but it turns out that the liquid was something called miso tamari. the miso:tamari ratio is generally very low, apparently, so you can make a lot of miso but only get very little tamari. i gave it a lick & it tasted like a strong soy sauce - delicious! the liquid can help protect the miso from becoming mouldy during the fermentation process since it blocks air from touching the miso's surface, & i didn't have any mould in my batch, so maybe i have the miso tamari to thank for that.

there wasn't much of it so i ended up just mixing it back into the miso. since i wanted to test it out, for my first dish i just went with a simple miso soup.

it just tasted like miso soup, but that in itself was kind of cool - six months ago the miso had just been some beans with other stuff mixed in, but now it was something i could just add into hot water to make into a nice broth.

10/10 would ferment again! 🥒