Tag Archives: Hatcho

Belize, Fermentation, Food

Home-made Miso Tasting.

Mad About the Beans.
Mad About the Beans.

Hello there every-one!!  Hope you are having a good day.  Today, I have two miso tastings from the time when we “were mad about the beans” and made buckets and buckets of home-made miso.

The Shiro Miso: has a higher proportion of white rice to bean (we used blackbeans instead of soya beans since we live in Belize).  We have actually been eating through our supply for the last month or so and I was afraid that I would munch my way through it all without doing some proper feed-back.

Shiro Miso.
Shiro Miso.
Shiro Miso Ready to Eat.
Shiro Miso Ready to Eat.

Shiro Miso Tasting:

Gnome says: overall, it is a light fermentation product; will continue to build complexity with aging. Less salty, sweet and mild tasting.

Munchkin says: I have used the shiro miso in soups, marinating of meat and to flavour pot roasts.  All flavour packets have been replaced with a dollop of shiro miso (in fact, we have ramen noodles with this miso).  It is so mild tasting, you need a whole tablespoon in a bowl of miso soup.

Hatcho Miso with Beef Jerky:  Miso made from bean (blackbean) koji alone.  We also added beef jerky and black pepper to make it into “Meat Lover’s” Miso.

Meat Lover's Hatcho Miso.
Meat Lover’s Hatcho Miso.
Meat Lovers Miso.
Meat Lovers Miso.

Meat Lover’s Miso Tasting:

Gnome says: Obviously needs more time to develop but at this stage, still very, very tasty.  Has strong mushroom overtones with meat undertones.  Can do with more black pepper.  Will certainly reach an exquisite taste and will peak in ten years or so.  A true masterpiece that has to be waited for.

Munchkin says: Beefy!!  Let’s start eating it!!  Yum.  So rich and creamy. This miso has such intensity of taste, you only need one teaspoon to make a bowl of miso soup.

There is nothing like home-made miso…you can’t buy it for love nor money!!

 

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Belize, Farming, Fermentation, Food

Full of Beans!

TogetherGnome was full of beans this morning and brimming with energy right from the get go.  He was out of the house by 5.30am with the brush-mower clearing the back of the farm.  I started cleaning buckets and basins, started a big pot of beans on the stove and washed sheets for koji making.  It was bean mania and the various bean preparations continued to exude beaniness into every square inch of the house.

When we finally met up again, Gnome had grated coconuts and I proceeded to squeeze the cream out of them.  I then laid out the coconut meal in the sun for the making of flour.

After this, it was back to the beans.  The night before we had decided upon making a “meatier” hatcho miso and so today we made Beef Jerky Hatcho Miso or as Gnome has coined it “Meat Lover’s Hatcho Miso.”  This involved putting 20 cups of fresh black bean koji and 2 lbs (1kg) of beef jerky through a meat grinder.

Beef Jerky Hatcho Miso.
Beef Jerky Hatcho Miso.

There was a few cups of black bean koji left over so we decided to make a small batch of Taosi which is a Filipino fermented black bean preparation, made by soaking the koji in brine.

Taosi Fermenting Black Beans.
Taosi Fermenting Black Beans.

Next we took the freshly cooked beans from this morning and added more Aspergillus spores to start a continuous batch of black bean koji.  Our goal is to fill a 55 gallon drum with hatcho miso…more about that in a later post!

Making More Black Bean Koji.
Making More Black Bean Koji.

We then had a brief intermission for food and refreshments.  For those interested, we still think that it is important to sit down and eat two proper meals a day, despite all the frenzy and excitement.  We had Chinese roast pork, pumpkins and shiitake mushrooms cooked in mead and sweet potato cakes.

Anyway, the next task was making Shinshu miso with the mountain of bungle beans from the freezer.  This was Gnome’s idea since I had been giving him such a hard time about the bungle.  Yes, we used up all the beans so problem has been solved.  We made 2 and 1/2 gallons of this…ready in one year!

Shinshu Miso.
Shinshu Miso.

Phew, it has been a bean marathon.  We were done by 2pm.

Munchkin and Gnome: Mad About the Beans!
Munchkin and Gnome: Mad About the Beans!
Belize, Fermentation, Our Products, Saving Money, Soap

Hatcho Miso Belize Style.

Gnome.Straight.SmileMiso Madness is almost over as the Munchkin is starting to feel twitchy over our dwindling supply of soap…Together.Munchking.Pointing

…which means that our run of frenzied fermentation is coming to an end and the previously, prematurely terminated Soap Marathon is going to have to resume (yeah, our soaps are really popular and people just can’t get enough of them; this is A Good Thing, she tells me ;-P).

After the frenzy of rice koji making and the resulting shinshu and shiro misos, we are ending our run with a couple of pig tail buckets of hatcho miso.  The first bucket was made two days ago, however, it turned out to be about a gallon short because I held back some of the black bean koji to reinoculate the next batch of beans.  There was a slight set-back with that particular batch (yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Great Bean Bungle…let’s move on…) and to make a long story short, another batch had to be introduced into the equation.  Anyway, back to the short bucket:  I just “happened” to have a gallon batch of miso from last year which was made with cacao beans and while very aromatic, the chocolate taste was just too overpowering (yes, chocolate-lovers, this is actually possible!).  So, we emptied all of the containers, mixed them together again with the addition of bird peppers (Korean-style??) and a generous handful of black peppercorns.

Mixing Black Beans, Last Year's Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns.
Mixing Black Beans, Last Year’s Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns.

And voila’, the first full bucket of Belizean Style Chocolate (Cacao Bean) Hatcho Miso (with chilli and black pepper) was born:

Super Hatcho Miso.
Super Hatcho Miso.

Time to start thinking about soap…