Donabe Cooking Class Report...Miso-making!

Non-stop miso-making this month and I love it.  On Saturday, we hosted a miso-making class.


The class started with learning about miso and tasting of different types of miso.  We also tasted some of our homemade miso.


The guests were then divided into two groups to work on making miso from scratch.  Team A made miso with steamed soybeans in pressure cooker, and Team B made it with slow-simmered soybeans (4 hours simmering).  When everybody was pounding the soybeans, it was like a Japanese taiko drum competition!


Everybody got their own handmade miso to take home to ferment for the next months.  I was so happy to see them enjoying making miso very much!


After the hard work, we had miso-themed lunch, by using our 2-year-old homemade miso.  The appetizer was miso-marinated tofu and eggs with wasabi.  They were so good with Hakkaisan, Tokubetsu Junmai (from Niigata).  Main course was Ishikari Nabe (salmon and vegetable hot pot in miso-based broth), followed by ramen "shime" course.


Everybody had my "surprise" homemade miso desserts at the end of the class.  I made Saikyo Miso Ice Cream and Miso & Walnuts Cookies.

Here's the full menu:

Theme: Art of Traditional Japanese Miso Making

Date: June 23, 2012 

Program and Menu

Introduction to miso

Tasting of different types of miso

 with fresh vegetables

 ~

Miso-making from scratch

~

Miso themed dishes

Miso-marinated tofu and eggs

~

Ishikari Nabe (Salmon and vegetables hot pot in miso based broth)

~

“Shime” ramen noodles

Sake Selection

Hakkaisan, Tokubetsu Junmai (Niigata, Japan)

Happy healthy donabe life.

Early summer miso-making

Miso-making process is quite therapeutic to me.  Sometimes I just feel like making miso.  We have many batches of miso in our basement.  I used to make miso only in the wintertime, because it's conventionally understood that slow fermentation in the winter makes better miso.  But, I learned that summer miso making is also good and you can benefit from the warmer temperature and have a good kick start of fermentation (as long as it's not too warm).


We've already made a few batches of miso this month in different ingredients ratios.  This was our standard style.


Because it's early summer miso, this will be ready to eat in as early as 6 months.  But, I will wait for 12 months or so anyway...I have a lot of older batches of miso to finish (current oldest is 2 years).

I also made koji-heavy white sweet miso recently.  In this batch, the ration of Rice Koji to Soybeans is 2:1.  This will be ready in about 6 months also.

You can find the entire process of miso-making in my older blog post linked here.

This winter's first miso

It was time again...

We've been eating so much miso every day, so we need to keep making more miso regularly.

This time, the ingredients were combination of both Japanese and American. I used rice koji from both Japan and US. Sea salt was from Japan. Soybeans were Laura's soybeans from Iowa.

You can find my entire miso-making process here.

We also checked some of our aging miso. The first picture is the miso we made in November 2010, so it's almost exactly 1 year old. Looking nicely developing. The second picture is from January 2010, so it's almost 2 years old! I have started using January 2010 miso in my cooking and it's tasting amazingly rich and full-flavored.

Naturally-made soy sauce

In the forgotten batch of our homemade miso (we made it last September), we noticed a pool of very dark liquid on the surface. That's the very natural soy sauce. In fact, the origin of soy sauce is the by product of miso. So we scooped it up and tasted...gorgeous. The white stuff is not mold, it's concentrated amino acid from fermentation of miso.

We removed it and mixed the miso again. It's going to sleep in our basement for another 6 months or so.

Miso Work - Our homemade miso developments

It was time to check our miso babies again.

All Japanese ingredients (including premium "Toyomasari" soybeans from Hokkaido), made in January 2010. It looked and smelled fantastic! It's nicely matured and finally ready.

This one is a real baby miso, which was made in November 2010 with all Japanese ingredients. Only 5 months old. The color is still light and you can see the grains of rice koji. We stirred the miso upside-down so that it will mature evenly.

This is our first "all American ingredients" miso, made in September 2010. The soybeans are organic Laura Soybeans from Iowa. The miso was aging very nicely, and it tasted so mild and nice. What a nice surprise! I want to let it age at least for 5-6 more months until I make them ready to use.

From March 2010, made with all Japanese ingredients. This has also very deep flavor and tastes really great. Mmm...we couldn't stop snacking on it from the bucket.

And finally, our first batch, made in September 2009, had its finale. We've been enjoying it so much past months, and I was so sad that it was almost gone! For the last cooking with this miso, I made a simple daikon & shimeji mushroom miso soup, with my soup & stew donabe, "Miso-shiru Nabe". It tasted so special that I almost cried.

Happy miso making and happy donabe life.

This winter's first miso-making

I brought back more ingredients for miso making from my last trip back to Japan.

On the day after Thanksgiving, we made a new batch of miso with these ingredients.

It was actually Jason did most of the work this time, and I'm so proud of him!

Japanese koji rice (rice, which was inoculated with koji mold), and Japanese sea salt (from Setonaikai Ocean). They were mixed together by hand.

Hokkaido "Toyomasari" soybeans were so large and round. They were cooked, and mashed to fine paste.

Mashed soybeans were mixed with the koji rice -salt mixture, and cooking water for soybeans.

Once the mixture turned to tight paste, it was transferred to a bucket and the surface was smoothed.

I think "after Thanksgiving" is a perfect season for making miso (just the beginning of winter, so it can go through the nice slow fermentation process through the entire winter season), so I want to make it our seasonal tradition. We want to wait for at least 12 months of aging for this. Meanwhile, we have many batches which gets ready to eat.

You can find more detailed miso-making process here.