Every year I try to make at least one new type of food/drink ferment. This year it's miso. One of my favorite discoveries while writing my book was Earnest and Sumiko Migaki's local Jorniji Miso. They cracked the world of miso wide open for me and now I appreciate it more than ever.
I love Jorinji's misos and have been lucky enough to try a lot of their more unusual products such as lima bean miso, chickpea miso, miso butter cookies, aka-shiso juice and amaranth juice.
Now I'm trying my hand at home miso making because I'm curious and I love fermented foods. I used Sandor Ellix Katz's recipe from Wild Fermentation to make my first batch of soybean miso in the photos below. Now I just have to wait a year until it's ready!
If you're making miso you need to source koji. I bought my koji at Uwajimaya but I know that People's Food Co-op also carries it along with a lot of other Asian markets...
Commercal rice koji. You can also buy other grain koji as well as inoculate your own koji if you buy the mold culture.
Koji mixed with a strong brine and a couple tablespoons of mature miso...
After I mashed the soft, cooked soybeans I mixed that with the brined koji and mature miso mix above...
Finally I salted my fermentation vessel (a food-grade bucket in this case) and packed the miso in. I added a good amount of salt to the top before weighing it down with a plate and covering it with a towel. I'll let you know how it tastes a year from now!
Read about my homemade red bean miso.