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Soy and legumes from Nagoya and the Tōkai region

Akadashi / chōgō (blended) miso赤だし

Akadashi miso is a blended miso built on Tōkai mame miso. A long-aged soybean-koji miso is mixed with rice miso, sugars and glutamate and nucleotide seasonings, then ground and strained smooth. It is not a separate fermentation; the blending softens the strong mame miso for quick red miso soup.

Fully documentedSoy and legumes6.1 months – 12 monthsFamily: Mame miso / Hatchō miso (soybean-only koji miso)

Recipe

Akadashi / chōgō (blended) miso, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Ocdp, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
No fixed amounts recordedEach maker uses its own blend; the sources give no fixed proportions.
Mame misoThe base, a strong, long-aged soybean-koji miso[Takeuchi1988][Ishida1969][JA-WIKI-赤だし]
Rice misoBlended in by some makers[Takeuchi1988][Ishida1969][JA-WIKI-赤だし]
SugarsThe 1957 trial blend named by Japanese Wikipedia used starch syrup and caramel[Takeuchi1988][Ishida1969][JA-WIKI-赤だし]
Glutamate and nucleotide seasonings[Takeuchi1988]
Starterkoji grown on soybean balls for the mame miso base

Total time across the recorded steps: 6.1 months – 12 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countLactic acid bacteriaBacillus27–30 °C

What changes: Koji mould grows over balls of steamed soybean for about two days

Step 1 of 5
Grow soybean koji balls for the mame miso base
Time
43 h
Reported
Temperature
27–30 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Bacillus
Aspergillus oryzae

The steamed beans are shaped into balls at about 55 °C, and seed koji is spread with roasted flour at 2–3 % of the bean weight. Output: soybean koji balls (mame koji).

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

koji mould grows on the surface of steamed-soybean balls while lactic bacteria grow inside and Bacillus is held back

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Akadashi miso is a blended miso built on Tōkai mame miso. A long-aged soybean-koji miso is mixed with rice miso, sugars and glutamate and nucleotide seasonings, then ground and strained smooth. It is not a separate fermentation; the blending softens the strong mame miso for quick red miso soup. Made in 5 steps over 6.1 months – 12 months. The longest step, age the mame miso base, takes 6–12 months (Takeuchi T. 1988). Salt is 10.5–11 % (Takeuchi T. 1988). Aspergillus oryzae and Lactic acid bacteria inside the miso-dama koji balls of the base do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step6–12 monthsReported[Takeuchi1988]Age the mame miso base
Temperature27–30 °CReported[Takeuchi1988]Grow soybean koji balls for the mame miso base
Salt10.5–11 %Reported[Takeuchi1988]Age the mame miso base

What makes this one different

Akadashi is not a separate fermentation. It is mame miso softened with rice miso, sugars and umami seasonings and strained smooth. The 1973 miso labelling proposal grouped akadashi with other blends as chōgō (blended) miso [Miyaji1973].

Related ferments

Safety

The base mame miso has 10–12 % salt in the Aichi type table [AICHI-ITC].

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Akadashi was first a cooking word for a soup made with mame miso [Ishida1969, JA-WIKI-赤だし]. By the late 1960s Tōkai makers sold akadashi and mixed misos as secondary products of mame miso, and by 1988 blended misos were being developed mainly in the Tōkai region [Ishida1969, Takeuchi1988]. Cooks at restaurants used to grind and blend mame miso and rice miso themselves; Morita of Nagoya first sold the blend as "akadashi miso" in 1954, and Ōta Shōten of Okazaki began selling Hatchō miso blended with rice-koji miso in 1956. In 1957 a trial blend for the Kansai market mixed 70 % rice miso from Toyama with 30 % Hatchō miso from Kakukyū, plus caramel, starch syrup and a chemical seasoning [JA-WIKI-赤だし].

  1. [Takeuchi1988] Takeuchi T. 1988, 豆味噌の製造と品質特性 (manufacture and quality of mame miso), J. Brew. Soc. Japan 83(2):105–111, doi:10.6013/jbrewsocjapan1988.83.105paper
  2. [Ishida1969] Ishida T. 1969, 豆味噌醸造の概要 (outline of mame miso brewing), J. Brew. Soc. Japan 64(9):799–804, doi:10.6013/jbrewsocjapan1915.64.799paper
  3. [Miyaji1973] Miyaji K. 1973, 味噌の品質表示基準について (on the quality labelling standard for miso), J. Brew. Soc. Japan 68(8):573–575, doi:10.6013/jbrewsocjapan1915.68.573paper
  4. [JA-WIKI-赤だし] Japanese Wikipedia, 赤だしwiki
  5. [AICHI-ITC] Itō M., 日本の伝統的発酵調味料である味噌について (On miso), Aichi Center for Industry and Science Technology, Food News No. 16, p. 3; type table adapted from みそ技術ハンドブックgov