Did you try miso, and even more did you try the white miso? Since a few years I always have the brown miso at home. It’s a dark, fermented paste made of soybeans. It has a rich taste and is absolutely inalienable in a Dashi soup stock. But since a few weeks, a new product is also living in my refrigerator; the white miso or Shiromiso as it is called in Japanese. How could I have missed for such a long time?!
White miso is made of fermented rice and soybeans. It has a rather high amount of carbs in it due to its natural origin but the amount you use it rather small so I’m sure we all will be ok.
Umami
The sensation of taste is categorized into five basic tastes: sweetness, sourness, saltines, bitterness and umami. The last one, umami was “found” about 100 years ago by the Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda when being busy extracting the taste from a dashi broth made of seaweed. The word umami even means “delicious” in Japanese!
The umami taste can be found mainly in Eastern kitchens but also in many more products such as: different miso (there are brown, red and white miso), sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus, dried mushrooms of different kinds, of course seaweed in many shapes, soya and other type of fermented products like kimchi, hoisin sauce, nutritional yeast, roasted nuts such as walnuts and pistachios, and even in sweet potato and celeriac! By adding one or more of these ingredients you get a much fuller and completed taste in your dish.
Did you try the raw parmesan yet? Due to its content of roasted pumpkin seeds and nutritional yeast it’s full of umami. Once you get a hang of the taste umami, you start to notice its everywhere (and where you are missing it).
The white miso has a creamy texture with a salty and at the same time sweet taste to it with a scent of lemon as top note. With its fantastic umami taste, it creates a love affair with all food based on vegetables. Add it to sauces, spreads, soup bases etc. You can even add it to a sweet dessert to create a richer taste. In short, the richness of the miso gives a full-bodied taste to each dish.
Miso; white, red as well as brown is an intriguing subject. Maybe you need some time to get used to its taste but when hooked, its hard to be without it.
In the coming days you will get two new recipes with white miso; a lovely celeriac gratin with a peanut sauce and chocolate truffels. Hang in there!
More recipes with miso on the blog already:
Cheesy cauliflower sauce without cheese
Make me feel a better person soup or just vegan miso soup without tofu
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