New Years Day 2016, No-Soy Miso Club

The second annual meeting of The Victoria Miso Club went wonderfully well.

We began by opening last years Chickpea mugi (barley) miso.  It had an intense rich smell, and a robust miso taste.  The colour was much darker than I expected and we failed to get all the air pockets out, so there were a few spots of mold inside.  But otherwise a success.

This year is two batches of red miso.  We used the same recipe for both, only the beans were different.  For both, we used frozen koji rice from the local Japanese food store.

Adzuki Bean 1 year miso

• 1 kilo dry adzuki beans
• 500g koji rice
• 200g sea salt (no iodine)

Chickpea 1 year miso

• 1 kilo dry chickpeas (organic)
• 500g koji rice
• 200g sea salt (no iodine)

Method

1. Examine beans and remove anything not a bean.  Wash.  Soak the beans overnight.  Rinse beans well.  Cook the beans in water until mushy.  The chickpeas I did in the pressure cooker in two batches, the adzuki on the stove in one big batch with just enough water to cover (add more water as needed).  The adzuki beans were ready about 2 hours before the chickpeas.
2. Strain the beans - keep the cooking liquid - and mash the beans as much as you like.  We like chunky miso, so we just had a go with the back of the spoon.  You can make a smooth paste if you like.
3. Combine some (about a cup) of the hot cooking liquid with the salt to dissolve the salt.  Mix this in with the koji rice when liquid is cool enough to put your hand in.
4. Cool the beans so that they are cool enough to put your (clean) hand comfortably in.  Combine the beans, koji rice, salt, and enough water to make a paste.  If you remember (which we didn't) add a spoonful of last years miso,
5. Put in vat, weigh down top, put in cold spot for 1 year.

As with last year, we relied heavily on Sandor Katz books, Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, for our miso recipe.  For a more in depth instruction on how to make miso, please see Katz. 

This year we are using plastic buckets to see how they work.

Affordable cooking:

Chickpeas were $7 this year, the rice about $6, and the salt, less than $1.  Let's say $14 for the gallon of miso.

Adzuki beans were about $4, the rice again $6, the salt less than $1.  About $11 for the gallon of adzuki bean miso.

To buy this miso in the store, it's about $16 a pound.  We made about 7 times that - to buy this much miso in the store would be around $100 - times two.

At a conservative estimate

Chickpea miso $100 - $14 = savings of $86

Adzuki miso $100 - $11 = savings of $89

That's not too shabby, especially when you consider we shared the expensive $25 between all the miso club members.  

Anyone who says you can't eat healthy on a budget hasn't made miso.

New Years Day, No-Soy Miso Club

The inaugural meeting of The Victoria New Years Day Miso Club didn't go exactly as expected, but it was a great deal of fun.


Two types of Soy Free Miso were made:

One gallon batch of One Year Chickpea Mugi Miso

• 1 kilo dry chickpeas cooked with kombu
• 500g Mugi (barley) koji cultured with spores from GEM cultures
• 200g Salt
• 1 Tbs South River Chickpea Miso

Stored in a cool place, my garage, protected from temperature extremes.  To be opened Jan 1st 2016.

Mashing chickpeas

About 1.5 ltrs, 2 month Lentil Mugi Miso

• 200g red lentils from Saanichton Farm cooked with kombu
• 200g Mugi (barley) koji cultured with spores from GEM cultures
• 24g salt

Stored in my pantry at room temperature.  To be opened last week of February.

For both misos, I used the instructions in The Art of Fermentation by Katz.

.

I'm a bit nervous about these, not just because it's my first time making a year long miso.  But because the koji grew on the barley with surprisingly enthusiasm.  Instead of stopping when the barley was white, I let it grow olive in colour, which means the koji mold was getting ready to produce spores.  Some people seem to think it should be great when used, others seem to believe it will impart an unpleasant flavour to the miso.  We shall see.

The other thing I did differently was to line the miso vat with a huge, food safe plastic bag.  Now I strongly dislike using plastic with my food, but this time I decided to try it because I was curious to learn if it actually makes the miso better.  We put the miso in the plastic lined vat as per usual, then press it down well to remove any extra air, then tie the bag tightly before weighing it down.  Like they do in this video.

The other reason I did this is because I don't know if there is any lead in the glaze of the crock I'm using, and I didn't feel comfortable having the food touch it for a whole year.

On re-watching the video, I realized I also made my miso a wetter than they did.  Hmm,  I'll make dryer miso next time.

Affordable (a very rough estimate):

Chickpea Mugi Miso

$7 for the chickpeas

$3 for the barley koji

$1 for salt, kombu, &c.

Total $11 for one gallon

Lentil Mugi Miso

$1.25 for the lentils 

$1 for the barley koji

$0.75 for the salt, &c.

Total: $4 for about one quarter gallon

Of course, it doesn't need to be this expensive, there are more affordable sources of beans and barley.  Mine was this much because I bought many of my ingredients locally, or when imported, from small, family run grocery stores.  

Traditional and Transitional, these two go hand in hand.  Both rely on locally sourced materials and skills you can practice in your own home.

As for allergies, these recipes are flexible.  You can use any bean you like, almost any grain you like, and there is even miso made without beans, and miso made without rice.  Most of the recipes are in The Book of Miso.

Getting ready for Miso Club

The first rule of Miso Club, we talk about Miso
The second rule of Miso Club, we love making miso

Tomorrow will be the inaugural meeting of Miso Club.  I've invited a very good friend over for what I hope will be the start of a long and happy ritual, New Years Day Miso Club.  The idea is that since red miso takes about one year to make, or longer, then we would get together every New Years day and make miso, then when finished, dig out the miso we made the year before and enjoy it.

Also, winter is the best time to make red miso.  Sweet miso like I've made before can be any time of year, but red miso, that's made in winter.

To prepare for miso making, I've been making koji barley.  This is barley grain that has been blessed with koji mold.  Yes, mold.  Mold is awesome.  What it does is it transforms the starches in the grain into sugars which can then be fermented into miso paste.

It takes three days to make the koji barley.

Day one, soak and steam the barley, then incubate it at about 90F for about 24 hours.

barley getting ready to steam

steamed barley is like a giant rubbery lump
and must be separated out before adding koji spores

wrapping up the barley to keep it warm while the mold grows

What I learned is that after 12 hours, the koji grain begins to produce it's own heat and the challenge quickly changes from keeping it warm to keeping it cool enough without getting too cold.  Thankfully koji is a loving teacher and can survive well outside the 'ideal' range.

Day two of koji growing, mixing the grain up every couple of hours, separating any clumps that form, then spreading the grain to abut 1 inch thick (the instructions said two inches, but this was far too hot) then wrapping it up again.

day two, spreading the barley out into an even layer

I should have stopped at the end of day two when the grains were mostly white with mold and a few yellow patches.  But I kept going because the instructions said to.  The morning to day three, all the grains were yellow and starting to spore - which is okay apparently, but not as sweet smelling as day two.  Next time, I'l stop when the grain says to, not when the instructions tell me.

Now I lay the grain out in a thin layer to dry and cool a bit before storing in the fridge.

The barley I'm working with is pot barley, the koji spores came from GEM cultures in the US.  I have tos ay, the koji spores worked like a charm,  I followed the recipe included with the spores.



The next step in preparing for tomorrows miso making is to soak the beans we will cook up tomorrow. Instead of soy beans, we will use chickpeas, sweet delicious chickpeas.  I toyed with the idea of making a lentil miso with local red lentils, but after this week's kitchen failure, I decided to use a bean I know and trust.



Some books about making your own miso at home
The Book of Miso by Shurtleff and Aoyagi
Wild Fermentation by Katz
The Art of Fermentation by Katz
The Miso Book by Belleme

Affordable:
2 gallons of miso will cost me
$14 for the chickpeas
$6 for the barley and koji spores
$2 for the salt
unknown for the electric bill, let's guess $3

Total of about $25 for two gallons of artisan made red chickpea barley miso.  This is totally awesome since the same miso sells for $36 for roughly 1/8th of a gallon in the stores (if I did my math right, that's $576 if I were to buy 2 gallons in the shop).

Next year it is my great hope to grow some if not all of the ingredients for New Year Miso Club, or at the very least, source as many ingredients locally as possible.  Maybe even some local sea salt.

Transitional and Traditional - funny how these two go hand in hand - miso can be made from locally sourced materials, excepting possibly the koji spores.  The Art of Fermentation by Katz has instructions on how to capture your own wild koji and to create koji starter when you already have koji growing.

Soy-Sub:  I'm making a soy free version of red miso.  Any bean can be substituted for some or all of the soy in miso making.  By making miso at home you can have complete control of every single ingredient

Review: Feeding Change Chickpea Miso

I was delighted the other day when I found another company making soy-free miso paste.  Feeding Change makes a Chickpea Miso paste that is "soy-free", "gluten-free" and (most importantly) "GMO-free".   It also claims to be 100% certified organic (awesome!).

Feeding Change's Chickpea Miso paste is smooth, sweet and salty tasting, and very delicious in cup of soup.  It's a sweet miso, meaning that it has a short (less than a year) fermentation period.  The website says it's a 60 day process, which is more than double most sweet miso ferments.  It's packaged in glass, with a plastic label and plastic lined metal lid. (Why the sudden interest in plastic in packaging? More on that later this week).

This miso paste is also Unpasteurized, which has it's advantages, and disadvantage (I'll get to that).  It is also Vegan Friendly.


After trying this paste in a few things, including my favourite breakfast cuppa-miso (I put some miso paste in a cup and pour hot water on it), I've come to the conclusion that there are definitely some aspects of this miso paste that I adore, and some serious room for improvement.

The thing I like best about Feeding Change Miso is the taste.  It's sweet and salty, has a smooth miso flavour, but not overpowering; has a smooth chickpea flavour, but again, not overpowering.  How to describe it?  The flavour is suitably strong, but not so aggressive that it can't be drunk on an empty stomach.

"Miso Happy There's No Soy", a slogan from Feeding Change's website.  With my sensitivity to soy and growing concerns about the sustainability of agriculture, having gmo-free, soy-free alternatives like this make my day.

Their website also claims that this chickpea miso paste is made (or at least hand stirred) in wooden vats - way to go for using traditional and renewable materials in production.  What they mean by double fermented, however, I don't know.  Unless they are referring to the koji growing part of production as a fermentation.  The word fermentation has so many uses these days, it's becoming quite the catch all.  But koji is a vital part of making real miso, so I'm glad they are including it.

Feeding Change Chickpea Miso is also a few dollars less than other chick pea miso(s) on the market right now. Every penny counts these days, and the only way I know to get a more affordable soy-free miso is to make it yourself.


And now for the needs improvement part of the blog post.  As much as I am enjoying this product, there are some areas the company can improve on.

First, the packaging.  Kudos to Feeding Change for using glass jar.  Not only is plastic touching food an increasing health concern, plastic waste (as I'm learning) is a major environmental issue and could doom us all if not dealt with soon.  However, plastic label on the jar indicates to me that they didn't think the plastic-free packaging all the way through.  The plastic on the inside of the lid is (more or less) unavoidable, and it's better than having the metal corrode into the food.

Next, I noticed that when I got the jar home and went to open it, there was an immense amount of internal pressure in the jar.  The lid shot off the top and landed on the far side of the room.  As startling as this is, it's not a health concern (like it would be in pasteurized food), it simply means that the miso paste has continued to ferment in the jar.  Being unpasteurized has major health advantages, however, it also means that the ferment will continue to 'breath' and gas build up is not uncommon.  I'm grateful that the jar was strong enough to contain the pressure, but I wonder how much longer it would have lasted before exploding.  Perhaps the miso paste was subjected to a prolonged period of un-refrigeration (or whatever the proper word is to describe being room temperature) during shipping or storage?  It certainly wasn't out of the fridge long enough on the journey home from the store to explain it.

As it was when first opened fresh from the store.
Not the tidiest presentation.

Another aspect of the packaging they need to improve is the size of the jar.  The jar is far too large for the product size which can lead the customer to feel short changed.  Though, I did check, that the weight of the chickpea miso paste (without jar) is as it states on the label (it is).  Still, having all that open space inside the brand new jar of miso has that negative psychological impact.

Again, as it was when first opened.
Notice the gap in the top and the large air bubble in the bottom right.

But that's not the biggest problem with the packaging.  Like the now defunct Organic Lives Chickpea Miso, another company with good ideas and lots of potential out of Vancouver,  There are a lot of air pockets in the miso.  When miso is packed with air pockets, it leaves it open for the possibility of mold growth.  Considering that koji (an essential ingredient in miso) is mold, the problem isn't one of safety.  The potential problem is two fold.  first, the  perception (so much of selling something relies on perception) that all mold is bad for us - not true - but still a prevailing meme in our society.  The other problem with mold growing in pockets of air is that it causes the miso around that pocket to develop a musty, unpleasant flavour.

These problems in packaging are very amateur and the company should have figured this out with the minimal research.  The Book of Miso talks a lot about this, and that's pretty much the go to English language book for learning how to produce miso both at home and commercially.

I'm confident as the company grows, they will find ways to improve their packaging.



One final thing, and please forgive me, I'm just being nitpicky here, however, the website brags that the Chickpea Miso paste is grain free - yet, the last time I checked (and every time before that), rice, a main ingredient in miso, is a grain.


Am I going to buy this again?  Yes, I think I will, especially if they fix how it is packaged in the jar.  Feeding Change is off to a good start with this product, and I can't wait to see how they evolve.

Soy Free Sweet Miso Paste Recipe, with just a little bit of soy-free Tamari on top

For those of us with soy allergies and sensitivities, finding a soy-free miso paste that we can enjoy (and afford) isn't easy.  So I decided it was time to make my own.  I'm not certain what surprised me more, how affordable it was to make or how easy.

Miso paste and tamari
both made without soy

You can use any pulse, be it lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, black eye peas, anything, to make miso.  You don't need soybeans.  The only potentially difficult ingredient to get is Koji rice, but most asian grocery stores can order it in for you already cultured.  You can also make it at home with a bit of dedication.  It takes a couple of days, and you can get the koji spores from GEM Cultures.  The third ingredient is salt.

The method for making sweet miso is easy: get the koji rice ready the day before and soak the beans.  Next day, cook the beans, mash them (or not) and then mix them with the koji rice and salt, and maybe a bit of bean cooking liquid.  Pack it in a vessel with a inner lid and weight to press the miso down, then tie it up with a cloth and leave it on your kitchen counter for 2 to 8 weeks.

Red Miso, has the same method for making it, only different ratios of ingredients and it needs to ferment for at least a year.  It also requires different temperatures.  Since it's more fussy, I decided to start with the Sweet Miso recipe.  But I have everything I need, including confidence, to try one year miso later this winter.

For this first batch I cleaned out the back of my cupboard and used a mixture of forgotten dried beans (mostly Romano and Black Eye Peas).   But like I said before, you can use any bean to make miso paste.  Most people use chickpeas for their first soy free miso making experience.

I used an antique food chopper to mash up the beans
but you can use anything you like from stick and bowl
to cement mixer.

The references I used for this are The Book of Miso, especially this chapter, and Katz's two books, Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation.  This is the recipe I used for the second batch of sweet miso as the first batch didn't have nearly enough saltiness to it and tasted a bit sour.

From what I've read, 1 gallon is about the smallest batch of miso you want to make at a time.  Something to do with the ratio of surface area to the volume of the something something.

Miso ready to dig out of the 1 gallon vat
you can see that some white mould has formed on top
that's normal.  Koji is a kind of mould, a delicious one.

So that's what this recipe makes, 1 gallon.  The ingredients cost me just under what one pound of soy-free miso paste is in the shop.  Since it made close to 10 pounds, I'm very happy with how affordable this is.  Next year I plan to grow my own beans which will cut the cost in half, and culture my own koji rice, which will take price of making this from $15 down to about $5 per gallon.

Soy Free Sweet Miso Recipe

1 kilo of dried beans
1 kilo (or just over) Koji Rice
140 grams sea salt (non iodized) plus extra
water
Kombu/kelp (optional)

Some other stuff you will need:
A container that fits more than 1 gallon (otherwise known as vat)
Something to mush the beans with
A plate or inner lid that fits inside your vat leaving as little room between the walls of the vat and the plate as possible.
A weight, could be a rock that has been purified with boiling water and scrubbed with salt
A cotton or linen, tightly woven cloth
...and other things.  This link covers it better.

• Wash the beans well, and soak overnight.
• Rinse the beans and boil with lots of water until they are mushy.  How long this takes depends on the kind of bean and how long they have been sitting in the back of your cupboard.  The older, the longer.  Usually for me it's about 2 hours, but some beans can take upto 14.  You can also use a pressure cooker for this step, but beware if yours is aluminium as sometimes that can contaminate your food.
• While the beans are cooking, bring your koji rice to room temperature (if it's not already).  I'm going to assume at this point that you read the entire recipe before starting out and already have your koji rice ready to go.
• Drain the beans, reserving the liquid.  Mash them up however you like.  It can be a paste, or it can be chunky, some miso recipes, like Natto Miso, keep the beans whole.  I do moderately chunky and puree or not as required when I use the finished miso.
• If you are using kombu then keep in large pieces and soak in tepid water now.
• Combine the salt with about 1/2 cup of bean cooking water, make certain it dissolves completely.  
• When the beans are below 140F (aka, you can put your hand in them and they feel somewhat warm, but not hot), then add the salt water and koji rice.  Mix really well.
• Add more bean cooking water as needed.  The goal here is to make a fairly moist, but not too moist mush.  To tell if the texture is correct, make a ball, like a snowball, from the bean mush.  Toss the ball firmly and assertively against a surface, like the bottom of your miso vat.  If the mush ball spatters everywhere, it's way too wet.  If it cracks upon impact, it needs more water.  And, if it just settles in, not cracking but not spreading out everywhere, then that's about right.  See the video in this post for an example of what you are aiming for.  
• Make certain the inside of your vat is clean but don't use any antibacterial soap on it as this will damage the miso.  I often use a bit of sake or vodka to wipe inside the vat before the next step, but this is optional.
• (Optional) Wet the inside of the vat and sprinkle lightly with salt.  Most people say this isn't necessary for sweet miso, but I find it makes a huge difference.  
• Firmly press your bean mush into the vat, so that there are no air pockets.  I do a few snowball size bits of bean mush at a time, stop and massage them into the crevices, and repeat.
• When the vat is almost full of bean mush, smooth off the top.  Evenly sprinkle at lest 1/2 a tsp of salt on top.  Cover the surface (directly on the surface) with clear wrap, or even better with kombu seaweed that you soaked earlier.  I go for a double layer, ripping the seaweed as needed to cover every last part of the surface of the bean mush.  
• Place your plate or inner lid on top, and then your weight on top of that.
• Cover with a tightly woven cloth and tie the cloth down so that no dust or insects get in.
• Place the vat in a secluded part of the kitchen where it can stay at a fairly steady temperature, room temperature.  Check it after two weeks, but it will probably take a month.  There should be a layer of liquid on top (the Tamari, see below), maybe some white mould from the Koji Rice, and should smell like miso.
• When you are ready to try some, drain off the liquid (keep it to one side for tamari, though if the miso is still immature, you may need to put it back in the vat again) and scrape off the mould.  Dig out half a cup from the center of the vat to try.  Press the bean mush back together to ensure there are not air pockets, smooth off the top, sprinkle salt on it, and wrap it up as before (kombu optional), replacing the tamari on top.  Try the miso you dug out.  If it's not ready yet, wait a week or two before trying it again.  If it is ready, then you can put all your miso in jars in the fridge, or you can use this same method to dig out miso you need for the week and let the rest continue to age.

You can see the coarsely mashed beans
and bits of koji rice in the miso
Sometimes I leave it as is, other times I puree it before use

Tamari (No Soy) Recipe

This is the liquid that forms on top of the miso paste while it's fermenting.  It tastes like super-strong-super-salty soy sauce.  Only if there are no soy beans in the miso, there won't be any soy in the tamari that forms on top.

Before you dig out your miso from the vat, drain off most or all of this liquid.  It's probably going to have some mould on top.  Remember, mold is one of the three main ingredients in miso (Koji Rice = special mouldy rice).  If the mould is white, yellow, or a bit blue-green, it should be fine.

Strain the tamari to remove the mould, sometimes this takes many strainings or even a bit of tightly woven cloth.  Bottle and store in the fridge.  Use as you would soy sauce, only use less of it, this will be much stronger.

Soy Free Tamari
Very salty taste, but delicious

Affordable:  Yep. I talked about this above

Vegan Friendly: Yep.

Healthy: Yep. There are some really fascinating studies out there about how daily consumption of miso has helped prevent radiation sickness, improve gut function, detoxify heavy metals from the body, and other good-for-you things.

Traditional:  Yep.  Until about 60 odd years ago, most families in Japan made their own miso paste, and each region (and family) had their own recipe.  Nowadays there are only a few dozen misos commonly available for sale in the shops.  Which is a shame.

Transitional:  YES!  With the consolidation of miso making to mid size and large companies, we have become very reliant on global trade and long distance shipping as a means of supplying our miso.  I think making our own miso paste can serve a role in transiting away from a lot of the problems we have with the current food system.  It's not just good for soups, but also for preserving pickles, marinades, condiments, and has huge health benefits.  Even those not use to eating miso could find this salty-savoury-sweet treat a beneficial addition to their daily diet.



There are a lot of different ways to make miso out there, this is just one of them.  The Book of Miso is currently the best English language book about miso, history, manufacturing, everything.  You can make miso from different pulses, grains, and even vegetables.  This experiment has opened up a whole new world, and I'm looking forward to exploring it all.

Everything's coming up Miso!

I made some soy-free miso paste at home and I love it.  Still working on the post with the recipe and my miso-making experience. Just in case anyone was wondering where I got to.  (ps, thanks for the comments earlier.  I'm also working away at Holiday letters and parcels.  So many letters to write.).

Anyway, I want to share this video with you.

I love the idea of a group of friends getting together to make a lot of miso.  I imagine at the end of the day, and after an amazing dinner of miso goodness, they each take home a share of last year's miso.  Like a Miso Club, one person has the place and gets together the ingredients, and the others subsidize the cost and help with the labour.

Back to work writing about soy-free miso and experimenting with different things you can make with it.

Using South River Chickpea Miso to make yaki onigiri

For a person like me, with soy allergies and an almost obsessive love of Japanese food, finding a soy-free miso paste is a real joy.  Almost as much fun as learning how to use it.

I'm starting to enjoy using this chickpea miso to make soup, but what I really want it for is to make sauces to cook other things with.  Time to try some soy free yaki-onigiri.

The miso pastes is quite chunky.  This can be useful, but not for making a smooth sauces.  So I took a small amount in a bowl and mashed it with the back of a spoon.  Not the best consistency, but smooth enough for my purposes.  

as you can see, the paste includes flavourful chunks
and the occasional whole pea

I put a few drops of sake in with the miso and mixed it very well.  This really intensified the flavour of the miso and added a whole other dimension to the taste.

Next, I made some onigiri with tuna-mayo filling.  I choose two of them for frying and spread the miso paste evenly on the large sides.  Then fried them like cookingwithdog does in her onigiri video.

Somehow, my yakionigiri always falls apart these days.  What a dog's breakfast I made of frying that eh?

The miso paste cooks really fast, so keep an eye on it.  The taste of the South River miso is pretty good on yaki onigiri.  Maybe if I could get the hang of cooking it better, then it would taste better.  This is something I plan to try again, and again, and again, until I get the flavours and method right.

And a mid morning snack for two.  Two tuna-mayo onigiri, two yaki onigiri and some salted cucumbers with a few drops of lime juice massaged in.

where I find some soy-free miso paste and eat pasta on Friday

Scroll down for recipe for very quick, Cry-Baby Cucumber Pickles.

If you ever are in a grocery store and you see a person with a foolish grin on her face cradling a bottle of something in her arms as if it's a precious and fragile as a baby chick, then you probably saw me yesterday.

I've looked everywhere I could think of in town for No-Soy Miso.  I'm surprised by how little miso is for sale in town these days, soy or otherwise.  Finally took a long shot and went across town to one final health food shop.  Thought I would have to beg for them to order it in, but nope.  As soon as I got inside I saw a huge double fridge full of miso, with one whole shelf dedicated to South River non-soy Miso paste.  Absolutely thrilled.

I choose a chickpea miso as it's the one everyone seems to talk about.  There is no soy in it.  It's made with salt, rice, koji and chickpeas.  It smells and tastes a lot like I remember white miso paste and tastes relatively mild.  It has a chunky texture with the occasional whole chickpea in it.



Once I got home, I realized that it's been over a decade since I've used miso.  I stopped cooking with it even before I knew I had a soy sensitivity due to the stomach ache.  I couldn't remember what to do with it.

I took a small taste and the first thing that came to mind is that it would taste good with popcorn.  It's the oddest food intuition I've ever had and I don't know if it is something I want to try, but there you have it, first reaction.


Instead of popcorn, I took a spoon full in a small mug, finely chopped some chives and added boiling water.

It was Okay, but tasted a lot like I remember miso tasting.  Since my body is use to getting sick from eating traditional, soy based miso, it was difficult to get over the negative physical reaction my body has to miso soup.

The South River's miso is very chunky in texture and I don't think this is the best way to eat it as it tasted like hot water, with flavourful chunks in it.  I think if I wanted to make an 'instant' miso soup I would mash this up quite a bit more.  Might add a pinch of Shio Koji if I were to make some miso balls.



I don't know if it's a function of his age, but The Ancient has a bit of a mean streak and usually takes it out on me.  I call this the dinner of tears as I needed comfort food after one of his insensitivities.

Chick Pea miso soup I talked about before, some anise bread, salami, garlic pasta (because it's Friday) and  cry-baby cucumber pickles.

Cry-Baby Cucumber Pickles

Half a young cucumber
small pinch of salt
1 drop sesame oil
pinch of sesame seeds

• Thinly slice the cucumber in half moon slices.
• In a bowl, massage cucumber with salt until they start to weep.
• With your hands, squeeze out your frustration and excess moisture from cucumber.
• Gently massage one or two drops of sesame oil in with the cucumber slices.
• Top with tear drop shaped sesame seeds.

Soy-Sub update Aug 2012

Updated the list of soy sauce substitutes (Soy-Sub) to include a link to a possible recipe that I'm keen to try and to include a photo of this Rice based Soy-Sub that I get from Japan.

The ingredients list is Rice and Salt, and it is somehow fermented to make a taste very close to a light soy sauce.  This is by far the best soy-sub I've ever had.  It's really delicious, acts like soy sauce when you cook with it, but is very hard to come by.

However, I've just discovered a service called JapanOnly, which claims to be able to acquire those rare and hard to find Japan only goods and send them to you for a small fee.  If they can get this sauce, it will be well worth it.   Fingers Crossed.



I'm constantly updating the Soy-Sub list whenever I find some new soy-free-soy-sauce, so keep an eye on it.  It's not just about soy-sub recipes, but also about what soy sauce does and why some soy-sub works sometimes and not others.

Soy sauce substitute (Soy-sub) recipes

Read on for a collection of soy-free-soy-sauce (soy-sub) recipes.  Most of them are quick and simple to use and do more than simply imitate the flavour of soy.  This list is constantly growing, so check back from time to time.

I have what is called a latent onset allergy to soy, which means basically one day I couldn't eat soy any more.  I found it literally depressing at the time, especially since Japanese food is my all time favourite, but now a days I've become quite use to it.

Being allergic to soy basically means checking not just the ingredients but the ingredients of the ingredients of everything you eat.  For example, did you know that MSG (monosodium gultimate) is usually derived from soy?  As is most Lethicin used in North America.

When I started reading ingredients, I discovered that cinnamon can often have soy in it as an anti-caking agent.  Raisins are often coated with oil to stop them squashing together, and guess what, 9 time out of 10 the raisins in the local supermarket include soy.  Chocolate is a huge one for containing soy as it stabilizes the chocolate and makes it less subject to changing in warm conditions.

Manufactures of ready made food products often change their recipe and sometimes two packets of the same product on the same grocery store shelf can have surprisingly different ingredients.  When you are cooking for someone with any allergy, read each packets ingredients list CAREFULLY.  In Canada, even the ingredients have ingredients list: flour, raisins, butter, all these things can hide allergens you wouldn't suspect.




Like I said earlier, I adore Japanese food.  Living without soy sauce was really getting me down, so I came up with a few substitutes.

Soy sauce does a lot more in Japanese cooking than just make things taste salty.  It kills bad bacteria, it prevents spoiling, it changes how things cook, it is basically magic sauce.

Here, because the internet is apparently useless in this area, are a few possible...

Soy Free Soy Sauce Substitutes:

Or, as I tend to call them, Soy-Sub.

• Salt and water, about 25% solution
•  this helps to prevent food from spoiling but it is an awfully high amount of salt and I know people worry about their sodium intake these days.
• 1ts fermented fish sauce, 1Tbs water, pinch of salt.
• This was pretty standard for me for a few years.  Make sure you get the real fish sauce and not the stuff with soy in it.  It's really good for cooking vegetables dishes like kimpura.  The fermented fish sauce is super-healthy for you as there is something in the sauce that encourages your body to digest extra nutrition from the food you eat (see Sally Fallon for details on this and Nourishing Traditions for a really nifty recipe on how to ferment your own fish sauce)
• This is not vegan friendly
• Coconut aminos
• A commercial product which is made from fermented coconut.  It's becoming easier to get these days.
• Personally I cannot stand the taste of this as a seasoning sauce.  It tastes a bit oily to my tong.  However, when used to cook, especially when used for cooking something over a long time like this kombu recipe, it's rather pleasant and imparts a nice colour to the dish.  
• I find it's also very nice when cooked with meats.

• Rice-no-soy-soy-sauce
• A friend of mine sent me this sauce from Japan, it's made from fermented rice and tastes like a mild soy sauce.  Although not as salty as I prefer, it acts like a light soy sauce in every way.  It cooks the same, it tastes the same, it keeps food fresh in my bento box lunch the same, it is virtually the same (only without the vomit afterwards).  Sadly, it's not very easy to get your hands on and I'm not sharing mine.  If I can discover more about it and where to get it, I'll let you know.
• I've tried HP sauce watered down with water or sake, but I didn't find it very tasty.  Then again, I don't like HP sauce, so that could be the problem.

A few ideas I've been wanting to try:

• Kombu dashi is something like I remember soy sauce, I wonder if I make a stronger dashi if this would serve as a flavour base?
• Shio-koji.  I've heard hints that this can act as a substitute for soy sauce, but I haven't found any references to how that might happen.  It is salty and it is sweet, just like soy sauces, so I imagine it would be very similar to cook with, only perhaps be extra careful not to burn the shio koji.  It would also have the same preservation qualities as soy.

Common soy substitutes that may actually contain soy

• Bragg is made from soy.
• MSG is usually made from soy
• tamari sauce is made from soy
• oyster sauces often has soy in it and doesn't taste much like soy at all.
• gluten free soy sauce has soy in it (just no wheat)
• Most stock cubes have MSG or Hydrogenated Vegetable whatever, or other potentially soy ingredients, so using this to make a soy-sub is no guarantee to avoiding soy.  Also, I've heard that combining stock cubes with balsamic vinegar can trigger a soy reaction in some people even if the stock actually has no soy in it.   True or not, if you don't know the person you are cooking for intimately, best not risk it.

Please let me know if you find this useful.


ETA Aug 2012 - wanted to share this link with you.  I haven't tried it yet, but probably will later this week if I have time.  It's the first half decent looking recipe for a home made soy-sub that I've found in quite a while.