Miso Chocolate Chip Cookies: 3 Tips for Making Miso Cookies

Miso cookies consist of miso paste, flour, white and brown sugar, and butter. Miso is a fermented paste made from soybeans, sea salt, and rice koji—cooked rice inoculated with the mold Aspergillus oryzae—that provides a subtle tang and saltiness to a standard chocolate chip cookie.

You can add an array of ingredients to any miso cookie recipe, including peanut butter, chocolate chips, tahini (sesame paste), or brown butter.

Miso has an umami profile: The perfect balance of savory and sweet, laced with a funky, earthy saltiness. The paste lends the same balance to a chocolate chip cookie as a garnish of flaky sea salt, with an added complexity of flavor.

Miso cookies are as easy to make as a regular chocolate chip cookie. Here’s how to make them your own:

1. 1. Choosing the miso: Thanks to its mild, sweet taste, white miso—a commonly produced fermented soybean paste also known as shiro miso—is a popular choice for chocolate chip cookies. Red miso, or aka miso, ferments for longer, giving it a deeper hue and more intense saltiness. Awase miso, or mixed miso, combines the mild sweetness of white miso with the richness of red miso.
2. 2. Choosing the chocolate: You can make miso chocolate chip cookies with different kinds of chocolate for different effects: Try sweet, creamy white chocolate, rich dark chocolate, or semi-sweet chocolate.
3. 3. Finding the right texture: Brown sugar and a shorter baking time are the main keys to achieving a cookie with crispy edges and chewy centers. In this case, miso paste adds additional moisture, guaranteeing a chewy texture instead of a cakey one. For a crunchy cookie, increase the amount of white sugar and decrease the brown sugar.