What does Salt, Soybeans,Water, and Koji equal?
The local soy sauce maker pours soybeans inoculated with koji in the town of Takuno (宅野), Shimane.
Four simple ingredients: soybeans, salt, water, and koji, is what runs the Japanese food scene. Combine these four ingredients together, leave it in a stable and dark environment for a year and what do you get?
Shoyu aka. soy sauce
That’s right, so I guess its 5 ingredients if you include time. But if you mix these ingredients in the right ratios, you get that Kikkoman soy sauce you see everyday at the supermarkets. In the US you can usually get 2 types at the grocery stores, the normal red capped soy sauce and the green capped one which has less sodium in it. In Japan though, if you go to the soy sauce section there has to be at least 30 different kinds of soy sauce flavors that now come in these convenient squeeze bottles.
Just like how we can choose between a million different brands of seltzer water (a slightly off comparison? I just feel like the US has a weirdly vast variety in seltzer water selection), there are so many options for soy sauce in Japan. The price varies from the amount of soy sauce, the brand, the “high quality” series, etc. you get the point.
So people may be familiar with the soybean, salt and water, but the koji part may be what might be unfamiliar to some. Don’t worry, I sometimes talk to my Japanese friends and they don’t even know what the hell it is.
I got this though, while in college in San Francisco, I worked at the Ferry Building Farmers Market at a store called AEDAN, with my wonderful friend Mariko-san. Here was my pitch to the confused people who would look at this Mason Jar that was placed on the table filled with what looked like a rice crispy with white mold on it.
It usually went something like this:
Customer: Hi… so what is this? (pointing at the moldy rice crispy)
Me: So, that’s Koji, it’s essentially a type of fungus/mold that inoculates a grain, in this case the rice.
Customer: Oh, cool… what do you do with it?
Me: Well you can combine this with soybeans to make miso paste, put it in some salt water to make shio-koji (a type of koji paste used for cooking), or even sake *shows our wonderful selection of products *
AANNDD boom, profit. Nah, I would then have to give them samples of the foods and etc. etc. and if I was able to convey the flavor, health, and overall increase in quality of life benefits, the customer would buy something from us.
Sarcasm aside, I really loved my job there and spreading the good word of the Koji Gods.
What these guys do is they get their roots into the surface of whatever it lands on and breaks down the cell walls and usually creates CO2 as a byproduct, so whenever you are fermenting things you always have to “burp” the container you are using. The other byproduct is the soy sauce or miso that we all eat and love. I usually didn’t really tell the customers this, but fermentation is essentially a fancy word to say things are rotting in a beneficial way for us humans. There are a few ways to prevent bad fermentation, you may all be familiar with some of these techniques:
A mold barrier
A bunch of salt or sugar
Maintain a certain pH balance
Use alcohol
A good way to think of this is that through the above process we choose what sorts of molds can enter our “food” by controlling the environment. If a certain mold that causes us harm from ingestion is weak to acidic environments, you can change the pH by adding vinegar. With soy sauce you have a mold barrier from the koji and a salt barrier. Over the years, Japanese people have figured out that combination of barriers leading to soy sauce.
Making Shoyu
Shoyu making is not really so much about the ingredients, but creating an environment where the right fermentation can occur
With all of that aside, let’s get to the main part to why I’m writing this, last week I had the amazing opportunity to make soy sauce or shoyu（醤油）with some of my co-workers in the town of Takuno (宅野）which is a neighboring town by the sea, about a 15minute drive from Ōmori.
The workshop was being held at a place called Chinaka Mame (チーナカ豆), a local middle eastern restaurant located right by the Japanese Sea. The place is run by a married couple, Kazuyama-san and his wife Ritsuko-san. Kazuyama-san had been preparing the soybeans that have been inoculated with the koji mold for the last couple of days. To do this, he put the mold (which you can buy online) on some wheat grains and then sprinkled that onto boiled soybeans. Apparently to grow the mold successfully, he had to keep the beans and mold constantly at 35 degrees Fahrenheit, which meant he had to keep sticking as thermometer into the mound of moldy beans and adjusting the temperature. See the whole workshop was all relatively hassle free because he essentially did the hard part for us.
According to Fujima-san, our soy sauce making teacher, real experts of soy sauce making would just stick their hands into the pile of beans and could tell the temperature and humidity. He also gave us another fun fact that the reason why women could not become soy sauce makers in the past was because apparently a woman’s body temperature is not very consistent. Meaning because a man’s body temperature was more stable, they would be able to more accurately tell the temperature of the soybeans. I’m not an expert of the human anatomy, so I’m not too sure if this is super accurate information, but as always any sort of distinction between the skill of a man and a woman is tinted with a history of sexism, so I would just take it with a grain of salt.
1.Measure 195grams of salt and 910ml of water and mix togetherin a jar
2.Measure 700grams of the soybean koji mixture and add into the salt and water solution
3.Stir the mixture daily, leave it in a dark and temperature stable location, burp the CO2 regularly, and wait for a year
That’s it, no seriously that is literally all that there is to soy sauce making, well at least at our beginner level. To change the flavors of the shoyu, one can put different ratios of soy beans, koji, salt, which gives a variation in the saltiness, umami, sweetness, color, and etc.
My friends and I were excited to see what our shoyu would taste like in a year. Since we all carry different types of bacteria and yeast on our hands, just by handling the beans could possibly change the flavors of our shoyu. Which means if my shoyu turns out absolutely amazing, then I can brand it “Shun’s Shoyu” and sell it for a high price right? We were joking around seeing if we could put on different music like jazz or classical to change the flavors as well. Hey, if they have those wagyu cows listen to classical music, why not koji?
My shoyu bottle, wonder how it’ll taste?
All that aside, I just want to give a second to showcase Fujima-san with some pictures. Just watching him run his hands through the soybeans had almost a type of performance to it. I couldn’t imagine how many years and countless times he had done that process, but I could see those years of dedication in the few minutes he was preparing the ingredients for us. Whenever he used his hands to mix the beans up, a puff of koji would roll out of the tray, almost like the rolling fog over the mountains you see in San Francisco over the Bay. Everybody was mesmerized when he would do this, everybody all holding their breadths for just a second in time, focused on those hands that were now covered in koji spores. I’m not sure if it is just me, but when people like Fujima-san, craftsmen and people who have perfected one skill, show us their work you cannot help but feel like you’re looking at something important, a part of their life.
Watching him reminded me of my grandfather who was a printer his entire life. Taking one job that does one specific thing and perfecting it over the timespan of decades… A lifestyle that I myself, and I think many of my generation probably cannot imagine.
But the soy sauce making will end at Fujima-san’s generation. I heard that his sons are off to other soy sauce makers as apprentices, but soy sauce will no longer be made within his family. We had an opportunity to take a look at his kura（蔵）or “hut”. Although the place looked quite run down, there were still these magnificent beams that made the ceilings of the hut, and the slight toasty smell of soy sauce in the air. Apparently they had stopped production of shoyu for a while now, and they only blend already made shoyu to I guess match the flavor profiles they are going for. Fujima-san would explain to us where all of these barrels used to be and the room where they fermented the soy beans, and etc. I could see and feel the presence of the what used to be from how he explained the past, but what was left over now were plastic barrels instead of wooden ones, dusty bottles of soy sauce, and a nostalgic past. It’s a story common nowadays, that’s just how society is moving forward, in a sense it is inevitable. The time where there was a local shoyu maker in every town is coming to a close and having a local business like that is no longer financially sustainable for many.
Where thousands of gallons of Shoyu used to be stored
The day left me with some mixed feeling about what I saw at Fujima-san’s place. I’m not someone to go around telling people that globalization is the worst thing that happened, and that the industrialization in today’s capitalistic society need to end or etc. I do think that we should time to time have shoyu that people like Fujima-san make in our lives so that we at least understand where things come from. I think that in the infinite amounts of choices we have in our consumption, we get overwhelmed in the pure amount of “choices” that we sometimes lose what we are really choosing. Instead of that new flavor, or that new packaging, I think sometimes we should choose on the history and what is behind what we are consuming, but you know time to time, not always. But I feel like choosing something so simple like shoyu with that decision making process can make a big difference in the long run. I know my way of buying shoyu has changed ever since I’ve moved to Shimane, where there are local brands of shoyu that only uses the basic 4 ingredients. I know that not everybody has the access to such shoyu or can pay more money for such an ingredient. Sooo…
I believe that choice is each to their own, but I can confidently say that I became more fulfilled with my cooking and daily life now that I have this choice I can make.
Alright Shun, let’s stop making freakin’ soy sauce sound so dramatic. Yeah yeah I know, but you know I can’t help but get all worked up about SHOYU!…. Just kidding, but seriously get some good shoyu time to time if you get the chance, it’s good shit.
麹:
The Japanese character for Koji.
Aedan Fermented
Web: http://aedansf.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/AedanFermentedFoods/
Phone: (415) 260-9435
Aedan is a wonderful fermented foods store in San Francisco run by my dear friend Mariko-san. They make an assortment of fermented foods starting from their famous Country Miso which won the Good Food Award, to their Amazake and Natto! They open up shop at the SF Farmer’s Market every Thursday and Saturday, and sell their products at various stores like Rainbow and Bi-Rite. If you ever have the chance to visit the Farmer’s Market go visit Mariko-san, you will not regret it! I’ll probably write a post about my experience there sometime as well.
Fermental Cultural Anthropology by Kokura Hiraku, is a great book if you can read Japanese. It humorously and academically outlines the history, process, and the current possibilities in fermentation.
Sorry I only have pictures of the food here right now!
Chiinaka Mame チーナカ豆
699-2304 Nima-cho, Oda, Shimane
Web: https://www.chi-nakamame.com/?fbclid=IwAR1Hl5P74kJJGFmiXFBdlCYRifv-IXGRdGyDR1W5S0_ofcUgOsxeQY62o8I
FB: https://www.facebook.com/琴ヶ浜のチーナカ豆-216451688452550/
Tel: 080-4261-6178
This little restaurant is right by the sea, where you can get a seat looking out onto the turquoise waters of the Japanese sea. If you look up the definition to aesthetic beachside restaurant then this will be the picture that will be in the dictionary. I would recommend their pita sandwiches which are all handmade. The outside of the pita bread is firm and has a good bite, where the slight burns on the surface gives that nice bitterness to the bread. The bacon for the BLT is smoked in house, the tandoori chicken is also homemade, and the mackerel sandwich is to die for. They even make pizzas on the weekends! There is nothing better than enjoying the salty ocean breeze while having a cold local beer, and enjoying a sandwich on a lazy Sunday. They also have shaved ice for dessert, where they make their own syrups. Just make sure to give them a call that they’re open. They usually stay closed during the cold parts of the year.
