A Little About Miso

I just noticed that over in the pantry section, both of the mentions of miso other than mine refer to a pre-made salad dressing that has miso in it. I also notice that people are having trouble finding this dressing.

I’m here to help!

Here’s the secret: miso is inexpensive, keeps for an amazingly long time, and is very versatile. So just buy some and play with it a little.

The Basics On Miso
There are a hell of a lot of kinds (see the Wikipedia entry if you want a not-entirely-comprehensive list), but the only ones you’re going to get without a big search, probably, are white (which is yellow/amber-colored), red, and black (which is deep brown). These are all basically the same thing in terms of ingredients: fermented soybeans (almost always), salt, and usually some sort of additional grain or other to give it a more specific flavor. [NOTE: These three kinds are NOT what is technically meant by shiro-miso, aka-miso, and kuro-miso, literally white, red, and black miso. White miso is almost white, very subtly flavored, and not common on the American market. Black miso is scary black, and I understand it very unusual---it's more a special regional thing. What you see here, the three most popular kinds and the three most likely to turn up in an American shop, are two kinds of red and one kind of brown miso that's often classified as red. The kind on the left is Tokyo-style red miso, and the kind in the middle is more Kansai-style (Kyoto, Osaka, etc.). The kind on the right is used pretty sparingly, and I think is more a cold-weather thing.]

When you buy miso, it generally comes either in a sealed plastic bag or a plastic tub; in my experience, the stuff in the tub is better quality, but I haven’t tried every kind readily available in the US, by a long chalk. I find that the plastic bag does quickly become a hideous mess to deal with (as you can see in this picture!), so if you get it that way, I recommend (but haven’t gotten around to doing it myself with this huge tub!) that you open the bag and squeeze/spoon all the miso into a durable tupperware that is generously large enough. Press it down thoroughly, trying to expel big air bubbles, but don’t freak out about it: miso’s durable. Cut a piece of the bag the size and shape of the tupperware (a little extra is better than not enough), and press it right down on the surface of the miso. Then put the lid on the tupperware. If you buy the stuff in the tub, it comes essentially in its own little tupperware, with a rectangle of plastic to press on the surface, which makes it all rather easier. Store it in the back of the fridge somewhere. It will keep at least a year, probably two or three.

When you open your refrigerated tub, first glance at the edges to see if there’s any mold or the like. Peel off the plastic and look: is the miso gray or anything like that? If not, and it still smells about right, it’s fine.

If you are new to using straight miso, I’d say buy the red kind [i.e. the kind in the middle in the picture], which is much the most versatile. I suspect most people from the Tokyo region would say to buy the white (amber) kind [which is to say paler red miso], but I think it’s too mild: if you don’t get that flavor clearly, you can’t play with it. I don’t recommend starting with the black stuff, which is pretty intense. [If you can get other kinds, like real white or black miso, don't start there!]

Uncooked Miso
You can eat it raw, so feel free to whisk it into your favorite salad dressing, for example. Bear in mind that it is very salty and intensely flavored, so be sparing about it. In a vinaigrette-type dressing, I’d try using it in place of salt and mustard in the base. Try about a half teaspoon: you can always add more to taste later on. I’d use a mild vinegar, probably rice vinegar. Stir well: the miso will resist at first, but then will sort of melt into the vinegar. Then whisk in your favorite salad oil. Don’t use extra-virgin expensive olive oil the first few times, though, because I suspect the delicate flavor will be shattered by the miso. For herbs, I’d use things with a pretty durable flavor: cilantro and chives strike me as a rather good idea. Be careful about adding soy sauce, as you could quickly have something puckeringly salty, and miso is already basically salt and soy. Once you have a base that works—and you’re not going to want to start out with the most delicate greenery, either—experiment with other ingredients, more miso, different acids, and so on. Citrus and miso go together very well. Chile and miso is likely to shift you right over into the Korean food flavors, and you should probably use a harsher vinegar to balance if you try it.

The big thing the Japanese do with raw miso is to pickle vegetables in it. You take a thin Asian eggplant, for example, wash it well, cut the tip off, and score the skin lightly here and there. Then you bury it in miso. Every couple of days, you stir up the miso and turn over the vegetables in it. When something feels soft enough to eat, eat it. This is, in my opinion, a great dish and something you shouldn’t do at home unless you absolutely love it. The reason is that you are going to need a hell of a big tub of miso, and it’s going to eat up a lot of fridge space. I can’t give recipes at the moment, because I’ve never done this, and since one of the world’s centers of miso pickling is Nishiki market, 10 minutes’ walk from home, I probably won’t for at least a year.

Cooking Miso
The usual thing you do is to mix miso with liquid. Sometimes you bring it to a boil, which dramatically changes its character (much milder), but often not.

In something like miso soup, what you do is to put some miso into a deep basket strainer, preferably a rather narrow one. You bring dashi stock to a strong simmer—not a boil!—and you dunk the strainer about halfway in, submerging the miso. Then you sort of swish the strainer around, sometimes stirring inside the basket if you prefer, until the miso passes out the strainer and melts into the stock, at which point you remove it from the heat and ladle it into bowls (traditionally wooden ones). As a rule, whatever special ingredients you’re adding to the soup, like tofu, wakame seaweed, shrimp, fried gluten (fu), or whatever, are added very sparingly while first bringing the dashi up to heat. The swish/stir method of adding the miso means that you don’t have to stir vigorously or whisk the soup itself, which would break up these delicate ingredients. Don’t let the soup come to a boil after the miso is in it.

The other way to cook miso is to mix it, cold, with cold liquid, and stir to form a paste. Depending on what you’re doing, you may want this thinner or thicker, but usually the proportions are about 2:1 of miso:liquid. When I say “cold,” I just mean “not hot”: room temperature miso and/or liquid is fine, and probably easier to deal with, but it doesn’t make a hel of a lot of difference.

Most often, the liquid added is mirin, which is sweet cooking sake, but I don’t recommend this if you can’t get mirin at your liquor store, because a great deal of what’s labeled mirin isn’t—it’s essentially sake-flavored sweet syrup. I’m not blaming America or anything, either, because that syrup is omnipresent here in Kyoto as well, while the real stuff is quite expensive. Instead, for 1 Tb mirin substitute, mix 1 tsp white sugar (it’ll be easier if it’s superfine, but what the hey, miso is pretty earthy stuff) and 1 Tb of decent-quality sake, and stir to dissolve.

Once you have this paste, there are a number of things you can do with it. Two basic ones:

A. Simmer something in very shallow light stock, usually fish but also chicken or pork, cut into bite-sized pieces. Ladle some of the boiling liquid into the miso-mirin paste, stir rapidly (and carefully—don’t burn yourself!) to dissolve the miso, and pour it back into the pan. Put a drop-lid on the pot and simmer medium-low until the meat is done. (A drop-lid is a cover that fits inside the pan rather than over the top. I use a pan lid one size smaller than my pot, preferably slightly domed. You can also use parchment paper, cut roughly circular; no vent is needed. You can also use a fine wooden drop-lid, if you can find one.) You usually cook various vegetables in with the meat, and the stock is often flavored, and so forth. For a popular recipe involving mackerel, see this entry at my blog.

You can also...

B. Spread the paste on top of a piece of meat, almost always a thick fish fillet, usually on the skin-side if the skin is edible. Normally you cut into the skin just a bit first, to help the flavor penetrate. Then you sear it for a minute or two (depending on thickness) over quite high heat in some light oil, just to brown the bottom a bit, and then turn down the heat medium-low and cook until just not quite done. (Insert a fine metal skewer into the thickest heart of the fish, just under the skin, and wait 5-10 seconds. Pull it out and press the side of the point to the skin just under your lower lip. When a piece of fish is done, the point should feel distinctly warm, neither tepid nor blazing hot. In this case you want it to be between tepid and properly warm, but don’t panic: most fish is pretty forgiving, actually.) Now run the pan under a blazing-hot broiler to brown the miso glaze. This works best with things like thick cod fillet steaks, but I’ve heard of it being done with salmon, so who knows?

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C. There are a bunch of ways of doing vegetables like the fish in version B, commonly called dengaku. The usual is a thin Asian eggplant, which you cut lengthwise in half (and sometimes across, depending on size) after washing and cutting off the stem. Then you skewer the halves on bamboo forks. Broil the eggplant, cut-side down, for a minute or so until barely getting saggy. Turn them over, spread with the miso paste, and broil about the same amount of time. Serve hot. You can also do firm tofu this way (NOT the soft, silky stuff I talk about in that blog entry, which will fall to bits instantly!). One note, though: Don’t worry about the bamboo forks, which are a pain in the butt as well as hard to find, in my experience. Just do them in the broiler on a sheet of oiled aluminum foil and move them around with tongs.

You will quickly find that when you broil miso, it develops a distinctive and excellent aroma, which is sort of half-nutty, half- that smell you get from a grill that says “yum.” You can in fact charcoal-grill miso vegetables and stuff, but it’s a raving pain because the stuff sticks like mad. If you want to try, you have to be prepared for some serious effort: grill the serving-side briefly, then spread that with the glaze and grill on the other side until nearly done, then turn over and hold in the flame—this is what those little forks are for, you see, not that anyone does it this way outside of a restaurant—until the miso is bubbly and dark brown. Oh, and don’t let it drop in the fire, either, because then much of your effort is wasted. Good luck with this one! (By the way, these days most restaurants grill the bottom, then run the things under a salamander—a giant restaurant broiler—to brown the top. They’re no fools!)

The cool thing about broiling a miso glaze is that the sugar in the mirin (or the substitute) caramelizes, bringing out a lot of the best qualities of the flavor of the miso.

Experiments
Once you’ve tried some of these things, you’ll know if you like miso. If you think it’s okay but not a big deal, that’s fine, because you can use it in 6 months and not have to buy more. Unless you hate it or it gets furry, keep it, I’d say. Don’t freeze it, though.

If you love it, start experimenting with other kinds. You will be stunned at just how varied the different kinds of miso can be, and yet all of them are unmistakably miso.

In broiled miso glaze, experiment with the amount and kind of sugar and wine. It would probably be excellent with brown sugar, but it might clash, I don’t know. Honey is a possibility, but you’d have to cut down the wine or it’d be too thin. Grape wine—I’m skeptical, but I bet it could be done. You’d want something pretty sweet, though, and I’d strongly advise starting with white. Offhand, I’d say very intense eaux de vie (grappa, marc, apricotine, etc.) would go very well, but you will need some sugar. I’d guess molasses would be a very bad idea, but you never know.

To experiment further, try using Korean doenjang as an exact replacement for miso in any of its various uses. It’s basically the same thing, but it does have a distinctive taste and character that is quite different from miso. Again, it comes in a zillion local varieties, but there are only a couple kinds readily available in the US. I don’t know anything about them, so ask a Korean.

The Best Thing To Do Your First Time Out
My strong advice—which should probably have come at the start, but there you go—is that you try broiled miso glaze almost as soon as you get some miso. I think this is very much the best way to taste it, and I don’t know anybody who actually dislikes it. The only way you can screw up the basic recipe is if you burn the stuff black, and even then it’ll probably be pretty good: almost-burned miso is lovely.

If you’re a vegetarian, definitely try the eggplant and tofu dengaku things. You can do this if you’re a vegan, too, without much worry: there are very, very few kinds of miso that have any animal products (including fish) in them, and they are specialty products costing a fortune and probably not exported to the US anyway.

Purchasing Miso
Start with the Asian markets, if there are any. If you can’t find it (which I doubt), see if you can’t figure out where the Japanese community shops, if there is one, because I know it’s there—miso soup is probably second only to rice for basic staples of Japanese home cooking. If all else fails, look on line for mail-order. Miso is a bit heavy, so you’ll pay a bit for this, but the stuff isn’t expensive in the first place, and it’s so durable in its sealed package that they don’t have to ship it on dry ice or anything like that. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting it if you want it.