nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Miso Nutty

douglas_bd

A month ago or so, I asked folks here about sous vide miso. I never really found much in the way of a specific answer, so I just gave it a shot. One of those ideas that's been percolating in my head for a couple of years was to make miso from almonds. I'd never really done much with the idea though. Until now.

I wasn't sure how to start, but figured I'd need to prep the almonds. I decided to take a dual approach. I'd roast half of them in the oven. The other half, I cooked in the pressure cooker with almond milk.to cover. The nuts then went into the food processor, with more almond milk to get the consistency I was looking for. Still a bit chunky: not smooth almond butter, but a grainy texture with a few chunks of whole almonds still in there. This mixture was a little flat in the flavor department, but I pressed onward. I added salt. 110 g for 700 g of almond mix. Now it just tasted salty. Then added 220 g of koji rice. Mixed this in thouroughly and packed into two salted mason jars. Into the circulator, at 43 C. I wasn't really sure how long to let this go.

I reached out to Josh Fratoni (via Instagram) who was running the lab for Sean Brock on the Mind of a Chef episode that I had cribbed the sous vide details from. He suggested checking every 10 days, and mentioned that he'd never taken nut misos past about 30 days for fear of oxidation of the oils. He also suggested to let some ride and see what happens.

So, nothing to do but wait. At 10 days, not much appeared to be happening. But just a few days later, the miso started to noticeably darken in color. It started to develop a nutty roasted aroma that hadn't been there before. And at 16 days (yes, I've been running my circulator continuously for 16 days now.), it tasted pretty dang good. So I pulled a jar and got to work. The other jar? Still going.

Find more posts tagged with

What’s for Dinner

Comments

tshewman

awsome! Well, other than for the having to use up a circulator for that length. I'm curious about this as well and well......my Joule's not here yest so I can't sacrifice with of my others. LOL! Really well done!!

douglas_bd

Yeah. This is my longest cook...and still going. I have 2 circulators, so I sacrificed the Polyscience for the project and have been using the Anova as my primary for other needs. I did pull the miso from the circulator once or twice to make use of the second bath. Especially with fish, it's not that big a temp swing so it doesn't take too long to adjust up and easy to drop back down with a glass or two of cold water. I'd like to try some other - non traditional misos too (I think corn would be awesome - plus I could call my post "Miso Corny" - or what about pea?), but they may wait a while.

tshewman

Nice! I don't trust my anova and my PS runs everyday. My hat is off to you!

fisher23

Good job, I like miso but haven't gotten in to enough to try to make it.

digitaldookiez

Nice work! This is really interesting. Do you think such accurate temperature control is required or even within +/-5-10 degrees is okay? I think I'll give this a shot with pine nuts....

douglas_bd

I don't think accuracy is necessarily required. At some temperature, you will begin to break down the enzymes, which would be bad. I'll just be honest and say that I don't know what temp that is, but believe it is above 43c. So if you can't maintain tight control, you may want to set the target a bit below that number. My goal was really just to accelerate the process. In theory you could just leave this out at room temperature for 3 months to a year or thereabouts and get the same result. With pine nuts, like almonds, you have to worry about rancidity, so acceleration should be beneficial. (Though you likely also speed up the oxidation process at elevated temps as well - so an optimum temp for enzyme activity could help accelerate that process at a faster rate than the oxidation process. Or at least that's what I told myself). I didn't run a control, or any other variables. Bad scientist. But this result turned out well so far. Maybe just lucky. I didn't die. (+1). Or get sick. (+1). Neither did my dinner guests. (+1), (+1), (+1). So there's that. Also, deliciousness. (+3). Anyway, I'm off topic. If you try it, please let me know how it goes. I'd be interested in your results and process.

tangma27

I actually did something similar to you except I just used normal soy beans. I did a little research, it seems like koji produces a bunch of different enzymes, amylases, proteases, lipases etc etc. From what I've read, it seems like 43 certainly favors one of these enzymes more than the other. Fore example some of the amylases' ideal temperature is 35c.

"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16459551"

I'm doing corn and banana now!

douglas_bd

Let me know how the corn and banana go. I plan to do corn, but may wait until it's in season up here. Are you going to go lower temp for banana? I would think you'd want to optimize for the amylase. Or maybe start low to let the amylase do it's thing, then kick it up after a few weeks to get the other enzymes going strong at the finish.

Joshua_K_31972

I am late to the game - I just finished the second season of Mind of a Chef. I should have known that someone in the ChefSteps community had the same thought I did. I did a search, and this was the first thread to turn up. A year on, have you tried any more variations? And how did the longer aged one turn out? Any additional advice you can give for following in your footsteps is much appreciated.