Kazuyo I still remember the day I tasted a home made miso first time in my life.
It was at my sister in law’s kitchen 10 years ago. I was amazed about the totally different taste from the one I knew. It was not as salty as the mass-produced ones but had full of aroma and umami and tasted very rich.
I brought back 1-2 kg of her miso to London for a couple of times but came to wonder if I could make one in London?
Miso is made of very simple three ingredients, soya beans, salt and koji. The first two are relatively easy to get but how about koji?
Luckily, I found a Japanese lady in Wales, who sold her home-made koji but even more luckily I came across a packet of brown rice koji in an organic supermarket in Kentish Town by chance, rather so easily.
So after all, I successfully made my first miso in 2016, and the following year, I started to make my own koji, too.
I usually prepare 2-3 different types of miso every February since then and keep them fermented for 11-12 months.
Even though you use exactly the same ingredients in the same formula, the outcomes are slightly different every year, depending on the climate and condition, which is a little similar to wine.
On the next post, I will try to guide how I make my own miso at our very small kitchen in London so that you can see the process is actually quite easy. All you need to do is creating the right environment for microbes to get active for the next 11-12 months.
