Niki Segnit’s beginner’s guide to cooking with miso

What goes with miso? Turns out there’s rather a lot, says the author of the much-loved Flavour Thesaurus

Miso is a flavourful paste made from fermented soybeans. Rice or kome miso, the most popular type, is made with soybeans, water, salt and rice inoculated with a culture called koji. In barley or mugi miso, the rice koji is replaced by barley koji. But the most obvious difference between misos is in their appearance: they can be straw-pale or near-black, smooth or chunky. As a rule, the paler the miso, the sweeter and lighter it will be. Some leading authorities on miso maintain that the complexity of its flavour makes it hard for westerners to describe, but I’d beg to differ. It’s hard to describe the taste of a courgette, but miso is so flavourful that it’s hard to stop describing it – you might detect barnyard, nutty, brown butter, caramelised, exotic fruit (banana, mango, pineapple), olive, briny, boozy or chestnut blossom notes. It is especially good with rustic flavours such as alliums, root vegetables and seaweed, but it has some less likely partners, too.

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