All About White Miso: 4 Ways to Use White Miso in Your Cooking

White miso, also called shiro miso or kome miso, is a fermented paste made from rice, barley, and soybeans. White miso originated from Kyoto and is the most commonly produced type of miso. White miso has a mild umami flavor with a mellow, nutty sweetness, and is the mildest of the many different kinds of miso.

White miso paste is made through a two-step fermentation process. First, miso producers inoculate a cooked grain—typically rice or barley (known as mugi miso), but sometimes soybeans—with a mold known as koji (Aspergillus oryzae). This rice koji is added to cooked soybeans, water, and additional salt and allowed to further ferment for up to 18 months, unleashing the effects of yeast and lactic acid. The resulting paste, with a consistency similar to peanut butter, is then ready to use.

The main differences between white and red miso are the cooking process and the length of the fermentation process, which creates the deepest distinctions in flavor. White miso, made from a base of boiled soybeans, ferments for only six months and has a lower salt content than its red counterpart.

Red miso, also called aka miso, is made from steamed soybeans and has a longer fermentation time—12 to 18 months—which gives it its deeper hue. As the color shifts to a rusty red (sometimes even black), the saltiness deepens and the flavors increase in intensity.

You can use white miso paste in a various ways in the kitchen:

1. 1. As a soup base. The most famous example of this technique is miso soup, but miso may also be combined with other ingredients like awase dashi to form a flavorful foundation for noodle soups like ramen.
2. 2. As a pickling agent. In misozuke, miso is used to pickle a variety of ingredients, from vegetables to tofu.
3. 3. As a seasoning. Miso paste is particularly versatile as a general seasoning. Add a teaspoon or more to salad dressings, braising liquids, or marinades to make dishes like miso-marinated cod, a classic menu item at many Japanese restaurants. It’s mild sweetness is a great fit for roasted vegetables, like sweet potato or eggplant, where it caramelizes under the high heat into something even more complex, or mixed into polenta.
   
4. 4. As a condiment. Miso adds depth to a crudités platter when paired with raw vegetables as a dip, or spread over corn on the cob—a staple snack at Japanese festivals.

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