Recipe: Spicy Honey Miso Sauce
Mar. 1st, 2009 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaTonight for dinner I made a stir fry of vegetables and fresh yakisoba noodles. The stir fry itself was okay, nothing earthshattering -- onion, carrot, kale, rehydrated seaweed, shiitake mushrooms, and fresh yakisoba noodles, a little dark sesame oil to taste, in proportions such that there are about twice as much total volume of vegetables as of noodles. Stir fry as usual, starting with the onions and carrots, then adding the mushrooms, then the kale and seaweed, and finally the noodles. The sauce I cooked it with, though, went over quite well with both myself and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jmpava, so I'll record that one here.
(I think the sauce went over so well because it's a distinct departure from teriyaki and teriyaki-like sauces, which are usually my default go-to. And they're good! But this was a wonderful change.)
Spicy Honey Miso Sauce
Enough to sauce the noodles for two people.
Blend the miso paste thoroughly into the liquid, using a whisk or a fork or, uh, your fingers. ("Your imMACulately clean hands!" as Julia Child used to say. I do use my [freshly-washed, clean] hands quite a bit in cooking, although, rest assured, rather less so if I'm cooking for someone other than myself andjmpava) If it seems disinclined to blend, sometimes zapping the liquid-miso mixture in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute will soften it up. When it's pretty well blended, stir in the honey and the chili sauce. But keep reading first!
The reason the list of ingredients says 'approximate' is because, quite frankly, I have no idea how much you'll want. This is partly because some of my friends think that one jalapeno in a pot of chili is a bit too spicy, and some practically eat habaneros like popcorn, and everything in between. The first person might find the merest whiff of chile sauce to be almost-uncomfortably hot, whereas the second might need a great quantity to be happy with it. The other problem, of course, is that hot sauces vary greatly in potency. If you have no Sriracha, but you do have a bottle of chile oil, it'd be dumb to go buy Sriracha for just this application -- but your chile oil might be a lot hotter (or a lot milder) than my Sriracha.
The deal with the honey is that the sweet and the spicy need to play off one another. So if you like a tablespoon of hot sauce, you might want two tablespoons of honey to counterbalance it (or whatever) -- but if someone who used half a teaspoon of hot sauce used that much honey, the sauce might taste unpleasantly candylike.
So here's what I suggest: Start with, say, half a teaspoon of chili sauce, and a full teaspoon of honey. (If you know you like it hot, you can start with more.) Stir. Taste. Continue to add and adjust honey and chili sauce until it tastes good to you, then stop. It should be moderately sweet (but not sticky-sweet) and distinctly but pleasantly spicy, and ideally the honey and chili sauce shouldn't overpower the miso entirely.
If the miso hasn't made the sauce salty enough to taste good to you, add a little bit of soy sauce to taste. Serve as a stir-fry sauce, over vegetables, as a sauce/glaze for meat, or whatever. (It thickens up pretty quickly when heated, so I added it right at the end of the cooking process, at which point it went from quite liquidy to noodle-clingingly thick.)
jmpava, so I'll record that one here.(I think the sauce went over so well because it's a distinct departure from teriyaki and teriyaki-like sauces, which are usually my default go-to. And they're good! But this was a wonderful change.)
Spicy Honey Miso Sauce
Enough to sauce the noodles for two people.
- 1/2 cup liquid (water works fine. If you happen to have dashi, use that. I actually used the water I'd used to rehydrate the seaweed. But water works if you don't have either of those.)
- 3 tbsp miso paste (I used red. I suspect other varieties would taste different, but I also suspect they'd taste good, so if you like white miso or black miso more, use that)
- 3 tsp honey (approximately -- see recipe)
- 2 tsp hot chili sauce (like Sriracha, which is what I used) (approximately -- see recipe)
- soy sauce, to taste
Blend the miso paste thoroughly into the liquid, using a whisk or a fork or, uh, your fingers. ("Your imMACulately clean hands!" as Julia Child used to say. I do use my [freshly-washed, clean] hands quite a bit in cooking, although, rest assured, rather less so if I'm cooking for someone other than myself and
jmpava) If it seems disinclined to blend, sometimes zapping the liquid-miso mixture in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute will soften it up. When it's pretty well blended, stir in the honey and the chili sauce. But keep reading first!The reason the list of ingredients says 'approximate' is because, quite frankly, I have no idea how much you'll want. This is partly because some of my friends think that one jalapeno in a pot of chili is a bit too spicy, and some practically eat habaneros like popcorn, and everything in between. The first person might find the merest whiff of chile sauce to be almost-uncomfortably hot, whereas the second might need a great quantity to be happy with it. The other problem, of course, is that hot sauces vary greatly in potency. If you have no Sriracha, but you do have a bottle of chile oil, it'd be dumb to go buy Sriracha for just this application -- but your chile oil might be a lot hotter (or a lot milder) than my Sriracha.
The deal with the honey is that the sweet and the spicy need to play off one another. So if you like a tablespoon of hot sauce, you might want two tablespoons of honey to counterbalance it (or whatever) -- but if someone who used half a teaspoon of hot sauce used that much honey, the sauce might taste unpleasantly candylike.
So here's what I suggest: Start with, say, half a teaspoon of chili sauce, and a full teaspoon of honey. (If you know you like it hot, you can start with more.) Stir. Taste. Continue to add and adjust honey and chili sauce until it tastes good to you, then stop. It should be moderately sweet (but not sticky-sweet) and distinctly but pleasantly spicy, and ideally the honey and chili sauce shouldn't overpower the miso entirely.
If the miso hasn't made the sauce salty enough to taste good to you, add a little bit of soy sauce to taste. Serve as a stir-fry sauce, over vegetables, as a sauce/glaze for meat, or whatever. (It thickens up pretty quickly when heated, so I added it right at the end of the cooking process, at which point it went from quite liquidy to noodle-clingingly thick.)
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Miso
Date: 2009-03-02 02:01 pm (UTC)Re: Miso
Date: 2009-03-02 04:29 pm (UTC)There are a baffling array of varieties of miso, but white (shiromiso), red (akamiso) and black (kuromiso) are the most common. Not surprisingly, white is the mildest and lightest, black is the strongest and saltiest, and red is in between. I use red or white, depending mostly on whim, and white is a good place to start.
There are a whooooole bunch of other descriptors, because miso can be made with all kinds of things -- you'll find some labeled 'brown rice miso,' some 'rye miso,' some 'farmstyle miso,' etc. I haven't experimented with those yet -- I'd say to start out, look for a package of white miso without a ton of other descriptors on it. If you decide you like it and cook with it enough to explore other options, go for those.
Miso comes in bags or tubs, usually, and in the fridge seems to last forever. Between the fermentation and the salt content, nothing else seems to want to grow on it. ;) I bought mine in a big bag and then sealed the bag inside another ziplock bag, but it's still kinda messy, being a sticky paste. The tubs seem to be more convenient. Apart from 'try white miso first, and buy it in a tub,' I don't have particular brand recommendations -- I haven't come across a brand that's bad yet, though. I just spoon it out of the bag or tub directly when I use it.
When I get a new bag/tub of miso, I like to start by making a few bowls of miso soup, just so I get used to the strength/flavor/saltiness of it. Once I start to get the proportions for miso soup down, I branch out. A few things I do with miso: add it to soup broth (for udon or soba noodle soup); mix it with liquid to form a less-diluted, more-concentrated miso mixture, and use that as the base for a sauce; mix it with honey to make a thick, sweet glaze (great on meat, or on roasted squash); add to the braising liquid for vegetables. Since miso's pretty salty, when I use it in soups or sauces, I either replace the soy sauce with miso, or cut way back on the amount of soy sauce used.