Japanese Cooking Is Fascinating!

One Bean, Three Ways: Tofu, Natto and Miso

Chilled tofu, a bowl of rice topped with natto, and a bowl of miso soup. They taste, smell and feel completely different, yet all three begin with the same ingredient: the soybean.

Set soy milk into a curd and you have tofu. Ferment cooked soybeans with natto bacteria and you get natto, with its distinctive aroma and the fine strands that stretch between your chopsticks. Combine soybeans with koji and salt, then let the mixture ferment and mature, and you get miso.

Put tofu into miso soup and the soybean plays two roles in the same bowl. The tofu gives you something soft to bite into, while the miso dissolves into the broth and flavours every sip.

Old Ingredients, a New Name

Tofu and natto often come up in conversations about plant protein. According to Japan’s official food composition tables, 100 grams of natto contains 16.5 grams of protein, while the same amount of firm momen tofu contains 7 grams. One reason for the difference is that tofu contains more water.

Plant protein and fermentation are two reasons traditional Japanese ingredients are sometimes described as “superfoods”. The word is a loose label for foods whose nutritional qualities attract attention. In the kitchen, each ingredient has its own story. Natto gets its character from fermentation. Koji helps turn soybeans into miso. Umeboshi, the tart pickled plums often tucked into rice balls, are traditionally made by salting the fruit and drying it in the sun.

A Little Goes a Long Way

Toss cooked spinach with ground sesame and you give it a nutty aroma. Put a little umeboshi on plain rice and its sharp, salty tang brings out the rice’s gentle sweetness. Steep kombu, a type of kelp, in water and its savoury flavour becomes the foundation of a dashi broth. Each ingredient changes the dish in a different way.

In a bowl of tofu miso soup, the same soybean appears twice. As miso, it gives the broth its savoury depth. As tofu, it adds a soft, delicate texture. Two very different results from the same bean, in a soup that feels so familiar.