Make Cheese With Miso
I’m really excited to be able to share the work of people I admire. I’ve been following and interacting with Rich Shih/Jean Dough/OurCookQuest for over a decade. He’s always working on something interesting, often focusing on fermented and/or smoked items. He’s someone who throws a little of everything at the wall to see what sticks. When I first thought about featuring other people on my website, he was the first one I contacted. I’m pleased to share his recipe for Miso Cheese. Please be sure to check out his blog OurCookQuest. As always, feedback is appreciated. We’d love to see some comments.
How to Make Cheese with Miso
I wanted to make miso with base ingredients way outside the grain and legume box. My motivation was to see how the koji transforms a high fat and protein medium with limited carbohydrates. Ricotta fit the bill.
Ricotta Miso Cheese
In cheese making, rennet isn’t anything but a combination of enzymes. It’s well-known purpose is to coagulate milk to make cheese, but there are also flavor-developing reactions happening over time. Bacteria and molds also introduce enzymes that make cheese delicious as it ages.
Ricotta on a Bed of Jasmine Koji
If you think about enzymes yielding a delicious product over a long period, miso isn’t much different from cheese. Koji has protease, lipase, and amylase for breaking down protein, fat, and carbohydrates to develop complex flavors. It only made sense to inoculate ricotta with this complex flavor builder.
Mashed Ricotta Jasmine Koji
After a month in the refrigerator, it tasted like a Parmesan miso-infused sweet ricotta. I plan to press and age it to see what happens. Making miso cheese is simple. All you need is equal parts by weight of ricotta and koji then add 5% salt against the total. Mash it all up and store it in a container with plastic wrap against the ricotta refrigerated for at least a month.
Shortly after, I started a batch of peanut butter miso. We’ll see how that turns out.
The Chefs Without Restaurants Podcast
Hear Rich Shih and Jeremy Umansky, co-authors of the book Kitchen Alchemy, on Chris Spear’s Chefs Without Restaurants Podcast. For more episodes on fermentation, there’s another one with Jeremy Umansky, the episode with Sarah and Isaiah of White Rose Miso and Keepwell Vinegar, and the episode with Daniel Liberson of Lindera Farms.
How to Contact Me and Book a Dinner
If you like what you see, please consider hiring me for an in-home dinner or cooking lesson. I run a personal chef business that services a 70-mile radius from Frederick, MD. That includes Washington D.C, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, southern Pennsylvania, and Eastern West Virginia. Get more information here. Thank you.
You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram (photos and Threads), Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and on the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast.
Very interesting!
I’ve been making koji rice for some time now, but besides making shio koji, amazake and miso once a year I really lacked the imagination how to use this wonderful ferment in other ways. Thank you so much for this interesting recipe!
You’re welcome. It comes from a friend of mine
So, I am a little confused… We are making miso ricotta by mixing the two together??
Did you make the ricotta first?
Yes, you’re combining the two together. This was a guest post by Rich at OurCookQuest. I don’t know if he bought or made the ricotta, but the two were combined
Muchas gracias! I shall try it!
So, Rich @ Cookquest or PerfectLittleBites, Did either of you dry the end product to make it like grated parmesan cheese?…….if so, how did that come out? I JUST mixed this up and parked it in the bottom back of the fridge…..waiting the month to see what this yields! Almost can’t wait!!!!!!
Hi John,
I never made this. It was all Rich. Hope it goes well.
My 10/17/21 Miso Koji got ignored and then finally now I am finding it again, and it is VERY sharp parmesan cheese smelling BUT it is now 6/6/23, so I don’t know if it is safe and I’m waiting for a day that I’m not going anywhere the next day to try it and see what happens. I will employ the same strategy as rats do….take a nibble and wait and see…then a little more if no ill effects…then I can share! I’m sure 20months is going to seem like WAAAAAY too old…but I have two 32oz container of this stuff using good quality (not thickeners; just whey, milks, vinegar, & salt!!!! (Biazzo brand).
Are you there? Still alive? How did it go?
I actually need to eat a little like I said I was….just didn’t pull the trigger yet….will do soon and report back!!
OK, I finally found the two 32oz containers of the miso-ricotta “cheese” I mixed back on 10-17-21….I took a teaspoon’s worth and did a little nibble. Very parmesan-ish and a bit sweet but the one little disappointment is there is an undercooked rice too-al-dente chew to some of it. I used Biazzo Part Skim in one of these (i.e. the one I tasted), and mostly whole milk in the other 32oz container. In October of 2021, I put it all back in the two Biazzo containers I got the ricotta from.
I picked this brand because they don’t have thickeners and ONLY contain whey, milk, vinegar, & salt.
Also, I note that what I tasted (about 1 tsp overall) was pretty salty too and I don’t recall if I stuck to the 5% of the combined weight of ingredients, but likely did.
It is now 11:20pm my time on 7/28/23 and I’ll report back IF I have any digestive issues.
My plan is to take one of these ‘old’ containers and dehydrate it and maybe grind into “sawdust cheese” to overcome the chewy quality!
I’ll report back soon!