My Japanese Kitchen: miso

OK, so this one wasn't made entirely in my kitchen, but I still made it! And... the Prayer House verdict is given!

February 2024

Twelve months ago Aunty Umeko asked if I would be interested in making miso (fermented soybean paste) with her. Would I? Oh yes! I love learning how to make the traditional foods, particularly fermented foods. Okasan and I had gone to aunty’s house and made the miso with her and it was really easy and straightforward.

We’d waited the 7 months to let it ferment and upon making our first miso soup with my homemade miso, Shujin was so impressed and said it was the best miso he’d ever had! Whilst he readily dishes out worthy compliments, to hear him say such thing made me very impressed with myself!! Haha!

Miso fermentation complete! Packing it from the kame pot into containers.

So when Aunty Umeko invited me again to make miso I was in. But this time, I needed to make twice as much, since last year’s only lasted 6 months before we’d eaten it all up. Also, this time Aunty was making it at the aged-care centre and other ladies were joining in. We were to all bring our own ingredients, pressure cookers, large mixing tubs etc, for making it.

I presoaked 8kg of soybeans. I gathered all my necessary supplies and turned up before the 10am meeting time. Aunty had told me to have 2 kg of soy beans already cooked before 10am. Rather than cook them at home, I thought it would be better to arrive early and cook them on location. So I got there early and started cooking in Aunty Yoko’s kitchen (she’s a resident at the aged-care centre). It fast turned disastrous.

The pressure cooker spluttered and leaked and splashed water everywhere!

I grabbed paper towel and placed a sheet over the top. It was soaked within seconds and dripping liquid all cross the stovetop. Even turning the heat down didn’t calm the pressure cooker! Pressure cookers never cook silently, and the spluttering and hissing sounds got the attention of Aunty Yoko.

While I tried to clean my mess that continued to flow, Aunty Yoko got stressed. Mess was expanding across her humble and crowded kitchen bench, and me racing after the runaway liquid wasn’t enough to appease her.

She was getting more stressed by the minute. And I was getting stressed knowing that I was making her stressed! What a disaster!

Removing the saucepan, I halved the beans and tried again. It didn’t help! I thought to ask if I could use her pressure cooker. Maybe something had happened between when I last used mine and now, and that’s why it was going so crazy?!

I took the beans off the stove for the second time. I transferred them to her pressure cooker and confidently placed it on the stove. Once it had reach pressure point, steam, liquid, hissing and mess started all over again!

What a disaster!

The longer I stayed in her kitchen, the more stressed she got. Understandably.

It was time to evacuate.

I grabbed my pressure cooker and headed to a spare room. I had been painting this room in preparation for a new resident. Since the room was vacant I figured I could make as much mess as I wanted and it would be easy to clean since there was nothing sitting on the kitchen bench! And there was no-one to complain about it!

My next drama was the soy beans themselves. They were just taking sooooo long to cook! Maybe they were large soy beans?? I didn’t know, but after cooking for 20min like Aunty Umeko instructed, they were still hard, so I cooked for ten more minutes. Still hard, so I cooked for 10 more minutes...

I had planned to make Miso with 4kg of soy beans, but at 10am, I didn’t even have 500gm cooked! This was taking soooooooooooo much longer than I expected!! I couldn’t understand why the pressure cooker didn’t cook the beans quicker... It worked with other beans at home.... Anyway!

The process was taking so long for me, that by 12 noon I had finally finished cooking just 1kg of beans 🤦‍♀️. Total disaster!!! 

By this stage, I thought to use both my pressure cooker and Aunty Yoko’s pressure cooker, and have two pots cooking to get the beans cooked quicker! So the second kilo of beans were cooked in a much more timely method!

No, the hotplates are not brown. They’re white! Such was my mess…!!!

Even so, by the time I was mixing the 2kg of cooked soybeans with the rice koji (fermented rice) and salt, only one other lady remained, just cleaning up her items before heading home. Everyone else had finished the entire process!

I was grateful for Aunty Umeko’s mochi maker machine. After straining the soybeans you simply put them in the machine with a little water and that thing blends them down in a few short minutes!

Soon I had my hands in the large tub, mixing warm soybeans, rice koji and salt.

Okasan helped me. The warm soft mixture felt nice in my hands, but the gloves I was wearing were annoying and kept getting stuck in the mixture and coming off my hands. They never used gloves traditionally, I thought. I wanted to take them off. But I didn’t want all this hard work to go rotten if bad germs got in! How devastating that would be after all this effort!!

I left them on.

Okasan put rubber bands around the top of the gloves. It helped a little. Once the mixture looked very well mixed, it was time for the fun part!

I made a tight ball of mixture in my hands, and once satisfied that no air was left inside, I threw it down into the kame pot.

Splat!

Okasan followed suit. She grabbed mixture and made the next ball and threw it down into the kame pot.

Splat!

The idea is for no air pockets to be present, otherwise bad bacteria can grow. (I’m thinking I need to do a video next time I make miso! Let me know if you’d been keen for it!)

We continued until all the mixture had been thrown, literally, into the kame pot.

I covered the surface of the mixture with plastic wrap and put bags of salt on top (it my neighbour, Mrs Suzuki’s, method to keep out bad bacteria.) Placing the lid on top, I covered it with a sheet of newspaper and used string to tie it under the lip of the pot, securing everything firmly.

Bags of salt are placed at the top of the kame pot.

The lid of the kame pot is also ceramic and not airtight, so the newspaper keeps the bugs out. Okasan had already started the clean-up. I was so grateful for her help.

I had spent over 6 hours making just ONE kame pot of miso! I was exhausted. It was time to go home!

What had gone so wrong??!! This was so much easier last time!

I collected all my items and placed them by the door and told Okasan that I was going to bring the car over to the front door. I gave clear instructions to DO NOT lift the kame pot. The clay pot is heavy when empty, let along when it’s full of miso mixture! Just leave it there on the table.

“But if we have an earthquake it will fall off. It’s not safe here.”

I found it amusing that sometimes earthquake-thoughtfulness is present, like now, and sometimes it makes no entry into people’s minds. Like at home in her room and all the items sitting permanently on the shelf above the bed…! Dementia can have no logic at times. I held my arguing-tongue.

“It’ll be fine. It’s just overnight. Shujin will move it for me in the morning. It’s too heavy, I don’t want either of us lifting it.”

She reluctantly accepted that.

I went and got the car. I stepped back inside the front door, and what should be on the floor with my other items? The kame pot. 🤦‍♀️

Thankfully she didn’t hurt her back!

I packed my items into the car, except the kame pot which I left on the side for Shujin to move the next day. Unfortunately he’d now have to pick that heavy thing off the floor!

I took my remaining 2kg of soaked soybeans home. I felt so exhausted and figured I’d be there till midnight if tried to cook them now and make miso with them!

The unfortunate thing about having presoaked soybeans was that I had to cook them. I couldn’t simply put them back in the pantry for another day!

With my energy regained after dinner, I set to pressure cooking the 2 kg beans, roughly dividing them up into thirds. I cooked them for 30min and it worked. Clearly the pressure cooker liked our gas stove over the induction stove at the aged-care centre!

I didn’t have Aunty Umeko’s mochi maker machine to blend the beans into a paste, and Okasan’s was deep inside our shed and I couldn’t be bothered to dig it out when it was so cold and dark outside.

The beans were well cooked and nice and soft, so I set to mashing them with the potato masher.

I regretted.

The miso was made, but boy was I exhausted.

Never again! Not til next February anyway!

So that was my miso making venture. All the hard work would be worth it come July when we could eat it!

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In other news, the Baptist Church had their February Board meeting and they unanimously voted to give us the Prayer House!

Oh my goodness we are being given a house!!

It had been a verrrrrry long wait, and I laugh at myself when I remember my dreams of moving into the Prayer House before Christmas! Ha! Now mum and dad will have plenty to do when they come! Yes, they had booked their tickets to come visit in March and stay almost 3 months. Dad was given the all-clear from his cardiologist to travel, especially since it was to Japan—the traditional Japanese diet was very favourable! And he was also given the all-clear from his radiologist. His cancer treatment went well. We were all so very grateful.

I was so glad they wouldn’t be cancelling their plans like they had to 12 months ago! Dad was sooooo keen to help with the renovations, worried we wouldn’t leave him anything to do! Well, worry no more Dad!

The Prayer House was going to be ours! I could taste the freedom!

I was sooooo looking forward to more space, kids having their own bedrooms, Shujin and I having a bedroom that wasn’t the size of a walk-in robe, and, if my dreams came true, having a WARM house in the winter, heated by a wood stove!! Woohoo!!!

And yes, Missy was already dreaming of white walls, a chandelier, and pink carpet for her bedroom... 😂

With our prayers answered, it looked like we were going to be staying in Japan!!

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Thank you for the messages and comments of support for my dad’s health journey. Having been a relatively healthy person all his life, it was very much out of the norm for he and mum to have lived 2023 from one medical appointment to the next, from doctor to doctor, hospitals visits and long stays, and just your whole life turned upside down from the norm. He is doing so well now, maybe just struggling with self-control and hot chocolates! Hehe!

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