In April 2023 the President's Medal at the Sydney Royal Easter Show went to a miso made in a small factory in Carrara, on the Gold Coast, from three ingredients: rice, soybeans and salt, fermented for about a year by a team the founder describes as Japanese mums. It sits on our shelf beside a hatcho miso made in Japan that took up to three years, and a white miso that took a fortnight. Same word on the label, three different foods.
That is the Japanese pantry in a nutshell: a handful of ingredients (soybeans, rice, salt, kelp, a mould called koji) turned into dozens of products by time and technique, with labels that assume you already know the difference. Most of our customers don't, and we had to learn it too, so here is the shelf explained, miso to twig tea, with the six makers whose jars and packets we carry.
Miso, and why you don't boil it
Miso is a fermented paste of soybeans, salt and koji, which is steamed rice (or barley, or soybeans) inoculated with the mould Aspergillus oryzae. The type depends on which grain the koji grew on and how long the paste aged, anywhere from five days to several years. Contains soy.
Shiro, or white, miso ferments for one to two weeks with a high proportion of koji and less salt, so it is pale, sweet and smooth: the one for dressings, glazes and a light soup. Aka, or red, ages for a year to eighteen months with more soybean, and the long ageing darkens it through the same browning reaction that colours a roast; it is saltier and deeper. Genmai miso uses brown-rice koji; mugi miso uses barley koji (so it contains gluten) and ages one to three years. Hatcho, or mame, miso is soybeans and soybean koji only, a speciality of Okazaki in Aichi, aged one to three years until very dark. Awase simply means a blend.
Whichever you use, add it off the heat at the end. A full boil flattens the aroma and flavour the fermentation spent months building, so stir the miso into a ladle of hot broth until smooth and return it to the pot with the heat off. Store opened miso in the fridge with the inner paper pressed onto the surface, and use a clean, dry spoon. Some imported white miso lists alcohol as a preservative, so read the ingredients if that matters to you.
On the shelf: Spiral Foods Hatcho Miso and Genmai Miso, Carwari Organic White Miso and Red Miso in 500 g tubs, Ceres Organics Genmai Shiro Miso, and the Australian-made Rice Culture White Shiro and Red Aka.
Shoyu, tamari and mirin
Standard soy sauce, koikuchi shoyu, is brewed from equal parts soybeans and wheat. The soybeans are mixed with roasted, ground wheat and koji mould, combined with salt brine into a mash called moromi, and left to ferment for months. Tamari began as the liquid that drained off pressed miso, and is made from soybeans with little or no wheat. Little is not none: some tamari is gluten-free and some is not, and only the label will tell you. Both contain soy.
Spiral Foods Shoyu is organic whole soybeans, organic wheat, water, sea salt and koji spores, made in Japan. Ceres Organics Tamari is 45 per cent soybeans with water, sea salt, rice and koji, fermented for up to six months in wooden casks in Japan and bottled in New Zealand, and its panel lists gluten at zero. Spiral Foods and Carwari make the other two tamaris we carry; check each bottle.
Mirin is where most people buy the wrong thing. Hon-mirin, true mirin, is steamed glutinous rice, rice koji and shochu fermented for 40 to 60 days, about 14 per cent alcohol and no salt; it gives teriyaki its gloss and takes the edge off fish. Mirin-style seasoning is starch syrup and brewed flavourings with under 1 per cent alcohol, and the salted aji-mirin types sit in between. Read the front label for "hon-mirin" against "mirin seasoning". We stock Spiral Foods Mirin and Carwari Organic Mirin.
Dashi and the three seaweeds
Dashi is the stock under nearly everything, and it takes minutes rather than hours because the flavour was built during the drying. Kombu is dried kelp; katsuobushi is skipjack tuna that has been dried, fermented and shaved into flakes; niboshi are dried anchovies; dried shiitake give a darker, earthier version. The classic awase dashi is kombu and katsuobushi, so it contains fish. Kombu alone or shiitake alone is plant-based. Bring kombu water to just short of a boil, and do not wash the kelp first: the white powder on the surface is the flavour, so wipe it gently at most.
For a shortcut, the Carwari Gozen Dashi Powder, fish base and the plant base version are both in 90 g tins.
Nori is red algae shredded, dried and pressed into sheets, for sushi and onigiri; Spiral Foods Yaki Nori is the toasted kind. Wakame is a kelp sold dried that rehydrates in minutes, the one floating in miso soup and salads; a 50 g bag of Spiral Foods Wakame goes a long way. Hijiki needs cooking, and aonori is the green flake on okonomiyaki.
Umeboshi, kuzu and rice vinegar
Umeboshi are sold as salted plums, but ume is a variety of apricot. The fruit is salted and dried for at least three months, and the pink colour comes from red shiso leaves. Traditional umeboshi at 18 per cent salt or more keep at room temperature; most commercial ones sit at 8 to 10 per cent and belong in the fridge. Whole Spiral Foods Umeboshi Plums go into onigiri, on rice porridge and beside noodles; the puree is the same fruit as a paste, for dressings and sauces. Sharp, salty and sour at once; a little does a lot.
Kuzu is a starch from the root of the kudzu vine. The tubers are mashed and washed repeatedly to strip out fibre and bitter tannins, then the starch is dried in blocks at room temperature for two months. To thicken with Spiral Foods Kuzu, mix it with an equal amount of cold water, stir into the hot liquid, and simmer a few minutes; about one and a half tablespoons per 250 mL sets a sauce translucent and leaves no starchy taste.
Rice vinegar starts the same way as sake, with koji on steamed rice, fermented to alcohol and then held at around 40 °C with acetic acid bacteria for weeks or months. Plain rice vinegar runs about 4.2 to 4.5 per cent acidity. Spiral Foods Brown Rice Vinegar is the genmai-su type, amber and mildly nutty. Sushi vinegar is rice vinegar pre-seasoned with sugar and salt, so do not buy it for a dressing by mistake.
Soba, udon and kukicha
Soba are thin buckwheat noodles, but most soba sold outside Japan is a blend of buckwheat and wheat. Only juwari soba is 100 per cent buckwheat, and it is denser and less springy, with more buckwheat flavour. Spiral Foods 100% Buckwheat Soba is that kind; their cheaper standard soba is a blend and contains wheat. Cook, then rinse under cold water. Udon is a thick wheat noodle of water, flour and salt, served hot in broth as kake, chilled on a bamboo tray as zaru, or with fried tofu as kitsune; Spiral Foods Udon is the dried kind.
Kukicha is tea made from the stems, stalks and twigs of the tea plant, left over from making sencha and matcha. It brews mildly nutty and slightly sweet, and it has long been the tea of macrobiotic kitchens. Spiral Foods Kukicha comes in 20 bags.
The makers on our shelves
Spiral Foods started in Melbourne in the 1970s with a group who wanted to follow the macrobiotic way of eating, and is run by its director, James Wilson. It imports miso, shoyu, tamari, sea vegetables, noodles, rice wine and rice vinegar from artisan suppliers in Japan, alongside Canadian maple syrup and organic oils. It is the widest Japanese range we carry, and the Spiral Foods collection also has the toasted sesame oil and the furikake (contains sesame and fish).
Carwari is a Sydney company in Homebush West, founded around 45 years ago as a sesame maker, grinding tahini on a large stone mill, and it has worked with Japanese techniques since 2006. Its miso, rice vinegar and tamari are made in Japan by traditional methods, the organic lines are certified by ACO, some carry Japanese JAS certification as well, and the range is Kashrut certified. Gozen is its sub-brand for the dashi powders. The Carwari collection has the sesame oils and seeds too.
Rice Culture is the Carrara miso from the first paragraph, founded in 2012 by Tomoko Onuki and certified organic by SX Certified. The classic misos are rice, soybeans and salt, all Australian organic ingredients, fermented for about a year, and the range now stretches to a Chickpea Miso. It is dearer per gram than the imports, and it is the only miso here made from Australian ingredients.
Ceres Organics began in 1982 as an organic co-op in Juliet Lamont's garage in Mt Wellington, Auckland, and grew into a wholesaler after Rodnie Whitlock merged his business in 1986 and Noel Josephson joined in 1987. Its Japanese range is made in Japan and packed in New Zealand where the label says so, and it is BioGro certified. The genmai miso comes as a red as well as the white.
Dai's Natto is the natto in our fridge. Natto is whole soybeans soaked for 12 to 20 hours, steamed, inoculated with Bacillus subtilis, fermented at 40 °C for up to a day and then aged in a refrigerator for up to a week to develop its stringiness. It is eaten cold on rice with soy sauce or karashi mustard, and it is an acquired taste. Dai's Natto Chu/Ootsubu 220 g is one of the tubs we stock.
Kimchi Club is the Korean neighbour on the same shelf: founded in Adelaide in 2018 by Minka Park, South Australian made and owned, certified organic to AS6000, and wild fermented by hand in small batches. Traditional kimchi is napa cabbage salted between the leaves, coated in a paste of rice porridge, garlic, ginger, gochugaru, fish sauce and salted shrimp, and left a day or two at room temperature before the fridge. Naked Kimchi is the plant-based version, with no fish sauce or shrimp, and it keeps souring slowly in the fridge, which is normal.
Questions people ask
Can you boil miso?
Not to a full boil. Add it at the end with the heat off; aroma and flavour are what you lose.
Is tamari gluten-free?
Usually little or no wheat, but not always none. Shoyu always contains wheat. Read the label on the bottle you are holding.
Are soba noodles gluten-free?
Only 100 per cent buckwheat soba. Most blends contain wheat, and the packet will say.
Is dashi vegan?
Kombu dashi and shiitake dashi are. Awase dashi contains bonito, so check the label on any instant dashi.
All of it is on the website for delivery across Sydney, and on the Japanese shelf and in the fridges at Leichhardt and Crows Nest, where we are happy to open a tub of miso and let you smell the difference.
