What to do with rice koji

Well, basically just that

There's miso brewing and a jar of shio koji in my fridge, but otherwise I haven't done much. Does anyone have experience with the stuff?

Cheers,

Martin

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Comments

matthewmicahhall

I haven't been able to try this yet, but I'm intrigued by the idea of using a koji rub on steak to simulate the dry aging process.

Martin_411586

The thing about this 'technique' is: it's a shortcut. And it's also one of those shortcuts where you know it was a shortcut when you taste the end-result

Shio koji (rice koji, water, salt and time) is a fantastic marinade for chicken thighs though! It gives them a subtle funky flavour and I suspect the salt in the shio koji acts as a brine. Funky you say? Yes: the good kind of funk, fortunately.

The downside to this marinade is that the rice and starches/sugars from it burn pretty much instantly at the temperatures you need to sear off the meat. I've also tried to blend the shio koji by the way, making it a smooth paste. Which then becomes unpleasantly sticky, crusty and inevitably burned when you leave some on the meat when searing.

As you can probably see, I'm in the 'very unrefined but it's promising' stage with this stuff.

FrankM_3301

Woah!....read this post last night....reviewed it again this morning and was reminded that I had a dream last night where someone gave me a sample of koji dry aged steak (I've never tried it)....bizarre! The subliminal power of ChefSteps.

Paul_Le_135010

I'm trying to get my hands on some koji to try out this recipe: https://youtu.be/wA63vrvS3R8

matthewmicahhall

Thanks for sharing your experiences to date. Would it be possible to effectively rinse off the marinade while still retaining the (good) funk? It's my understanding that the enzymatic action of the koji rub alters the surface of the protein. It seems like a quick rinse would be sufficient to remove the problem (retained starches/sugars from the rub) without significantly extracting the good stuff (products of the enzymatic reactions, salt that has diffused into the surface). Please keep us posted on your progress!

matthewmicahhall

You are getting sleepy....sleepy...so sleepy. Are you asleep? You will buy me a Joule....buy me a Joule...buy me a Joule.

Martin_411586

Where do you live? Or make it yourself, making Koji isn't hard

Martin_411586

Welcome

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll give it a try!

Paul_Le_135010

I'm in London UK

Martin_411586

Not too far from Utrecht (NL), so if you're in the neighbourhood...

tangma27

@brian douglas and I have fermetned other things like corn,almonds, bananas with koji. I don't know how down you are with grasshoppers but redzepi has this video online that low key i've been wanting to try. https://vimeo.com/53073344