Shio Koji. Lately, I have been putting that $H!T on everything. Ever since I finished the Koji Alchemy book, which I highly recommend, I have been trying to get my hands dirty with koji. No deep dive here yet, just small baby steps. It started with just seasoning with a bottle that you can just buy and use it right away like any type of seasoning. I would use it as a marinade or as a finishing when sautéeing vegetables, (Nicholas loves it). Everything came out pretty tasty so far, and I’ve found there’s less of a chance of over-seasoning as long as it’s used sparingly. Note that shio koji has both sweetness and saltiness, and the commercial ones tend to be a little bit on the saltier side.

Next, we bought a tub of rice inoculated with koji spores and wanted to make our own shio koji. The process is actually pretty simple: in a glass jar (or other non-reactive container), place 50:50 (by weight) rice inoculated with koji:water and add 2-7% salt of the combined weight. Let it ferment at room temperature about 7-10 days, stirring once/twice daily. How do you know it’s ready? Taste it. Once you’re happy with the taste, just stick it in the fridge, it will keep for months.

The next level up from here is to get our own spores, steam our own grains, and inoculate the grains ourselves to make more shio koji and things like shoyu and miso. The hope is that eventually we can grow everything we need to make every we need on the farm. It’s good to have big goals right? lol