Friday, August 3, 2012

Quick Pickle Cucumbers with Shio Koji

Koji is fast on its way to becoming the next super-food.  I give it about 8 months to catch on and make it to main stream media, another 6 months after that to be a common additive to commercial products.  Koji is very popular in Japan right now.  A traditional food with amazing health benefits.  I've heard that it is Japan's National Fungus, and is used for making everything from Sake to Shio Koji

One of my friends from Japan sent me a jar of Shio Koji.  My rough knowledge of Japanese food terms tells me that Shio means salty (or possibly white?) and Koji is the name of the rice fungus. You can use Shio Koji for tenderizing and flavouring meat and you can use it for making pickles.






My first attempt at Shio Koji cucumber pickles.

I cut up two small cucumbers and added about 1 tsp of Shio Koji, then let it sit for about half an hour.

The instructions (in Japanese of course, so I had a friend translate it) say you use 20% by weight of Shio Koji to the vegs.  So if you have 100g of cucumbers, you add 20g of  Shio Koji.  It seems a bit strong to me, and as I only have a little bit, I didn't want to waste it.  But I think I should have used more as I found these pickles a bit bland.

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