More about miso. 28 September 2007 1:18 pm
Posted by Tracy in : GMOs, breakfast, pictures, recipes, soup, vegan, vegetarian , trackbackSo last week I sang the praises of miso soup and gave a quick and easy recipe, suitable for kludging together for breakfast, even. But even that may have been overcomplicating things a bit — in Famous Vegetarians and Their Favorite Recipes
Before I write a more elaborate miso soup recipe here, I should finally finish a post about soup stock, including my not-so-traditional approach to dashi, which is perhaps the most historically appropriate liquid with which to make miso soup. For now, please accept the slightly more complicated recipe I found under the lid of my Miso Master barley miso container (click on the image for a more readable version over at Flickr):
Better still, check out the cute little illustrations of the miso making process (again, there’s larger, more readible versions of the image at Flickr). Long story short (and big thanks to Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking for its clear and concise descriptions on this and so many subjects), miso is a paste of cooked ground soybeans mixed with another grain or legume that has been cooked and mixed with koji (a mix of Aspergillus mold hyphae and the food it was grown on) and allowed to ferment for a few days, sort of like sourdough starter. In fact, the remaining ingredients of miso are salt and a bit of an older batch of miso, just to pass along the bacteria and yeasts that made the previous batch a good one. The whole mess is allowed to ferment and age while the bacteria, yeasts, and other molds do their thing on the soybeans (which are hard for people to digest in their less-processed form), and the resultant very nutritious and easy to digest paste can be used in soup, like I’ve already described, and lots of other foods besides.
Fun fact! The excess liquid from soybean miso is tamari soy sauce!
There are lots of different kinds of miso, as Peter L. mentioned in his comments to my first miso soup recipe. The darkest and richest in flavor is hatcho miso, which is generally aged for longer than other kinds of miso. Besides age, other sources of the wide variations in miso taste, color, and texture come from the grains or legumes used in the miso and its koji base, as well as how finely these ingredients are ground. In general, the lighter in color and finer in texture the miso, the milder and sweeter its flavor. (I am almost always surprised by how sweet miso can be — I think of it as a salty food, but in reality the flavor of good miso is much more complex.) Lighter, milder misos are easier to integrate into almost any soup or sauce you want to give a little boost of savory flavor, but I think darker misos have a little more personality, even if that personality can become a dominant one very easily. (Darker misos also tend to be saltier, and I like really salty foods.)
Right now in my fridge I’ve got organic white miso by Westbrae Natural, and organic Country Barley miso by Miso Master (the source of the label scanned above). Westbrae also makes a pretty good red miso, but I’ve been very impressed by the Miso Master, which I got back in my days at the Sundance cheese department, when miso was one of the random refrigerated items that wouldn’t fit in the dairy case, so it was my responsibility. This particular package of barley miso was a little damaged and couldn’t be sold, but no way was I letting that good stuff go to waste. Anyway, Miso Master also makes soy-free chickpea miso, which I’ve never tried but made a point of stocking because miso is awesome but soy is a really common food allergy. Also, yes, I left the Sundance cheese department almost a year ago, which brings me to one of my last points: miso may be expensive, but a little goes a long way, and it keeps for freaking ever, so when you factor all that together it’s a really good deal. I recommend buying a dark and a light miso, and using a mix for soup, and experimenting to figure out how you like to use it. As I mentioned before, miso is a good way to add savoriness to vegan and vegetarian soups and sauces — also it makes tasty salad dressing. My other recommendation is to buy organic miso, and organic soy products in general, because soybeans are one of the most common genetically modified foods, and while we don’t necessarily know those are bad for human or environmental health, they really bother me on a legal and political level, as I ranted many months ago.
And finally, just to end things on a happy and delicious note, check out this awesome chickpea-noodle soup recipe over at The Post-Punk Kitchen. Yum!
