Miso

We offer the possibility to either taste and buy our existing hand-made misos or we can prepare for you your custom made miso.

There are always several varied misos fermenting and maturing in Metsik Toit's pantry. Some examples from currently available misos:

- A short sweet shiro-style miso made from chickpeas and rice-koji

- Soy bean and rice-koji miso, fermented for 3-years

- Adzuki bean and barley-koji miso

- Soy beans, barley-koji and chanterelle miso

We offer all interested parties the possibility to either taste and buy our existing hand-made misos or we can prepare for you your own custom made miso.

What is miso? Miso is a traditional Japanese fermented umami-rich flavour paste. Traditionally miso is made by fermenting soy beans with salt ja koji (the Japanese culinary mold Aspergillus oryzae) . Often there is also a grain added to the miso. In this case, the koji-mold is typically grown before on the grain (the typical grains being either rice or barley) .

Miso is used to flavour sauces, salad dressings, spreads, soups. Possibly the most famous dish made from miso is "miso soup", where miso is mixed with the dashi broth. You can also marinade, ferment or glaze meat, fish or vegetables with miso. Lately miso has been used more and more outside of Japan and thus even more varied applications have been popularised e.g miso is used in desserts. Miso is considered to be very healthy, this protein rich lacto-fermented paste is rich in vitamins and minerals.

All our misos are limited edition small batches. We use only high quality ingredients (mostly organic). If the recipe permits, we always chose locally grown organic produce (e.g barley). We also play around with replacing some ingredients with a local alternative (e.g. locally grown pulses).

When preparing your custom made miso, we can take into account the following aspects:

A local miso, where all the ingredients are locally grown
Miso that is prepared with organically grown ingredients
Gluten-free miso (e.g. made with rice-koji, barley-koji or buckwheat-koji)
Soy bean free miso (pulses such as chickpeas, peas, other beans are used)
Traditional-style misos (rice-koji+soy beans; barley-koji+soy beans etc)

We prepare our misos following a two-step process. It all begins by inoculating the grain (e.g.rice, barley) with koji-spores. Thereafter, when the enzyme-rich super fragrant koji-cake is ready, we add the cooked pulses/beans and salt. Dependent on if the goal is to prepare a short sweet shiro-style miso or a longer saltier deeply umami tasting miso, we choose the ratios of koji inoculated grain, pulses/beans and salt.

In choosing our ingredients, we either use the traditional miso ingredients (rice, soy beans), locally grown grains (barley, buckwheat, oat) or pulses and beans from far and near. Adding local wild herbs, mushrooms and/or vegetables (e.g.roasted Jerusalem Artichoke, beets) gives our misos a distinct local flavour profile.

Lets be in touch: info@metsiktoit.ee