Meet Koji, Your New Favorite Fungus

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2017

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s impossible to imagine Japanese meals without soy sauce, or the umami-rich fermented bean paste called miso, or the rice-based spirit known as sake. Which means that Japanese cuisine depends on the one fungus that enables the fermentation of all these delicious foods: koji. Today, American chefs are discovering what Asian cooks have known for centuries, that koji is a microbial powerhouse with seemingly magical abilities to completely transform food. But how does a mold from a family of microbes known for their toxicity turn salty, mashed beans into sticky, succulent miso? How did koji make its way from Japan to the U.S.? And how might the weird and wonderful ways chefs in the U.S. are now using koji transform the American dinner table, too? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's check out this pork chop.
0:04.0	I'm not sure anybody other than you maybe has been so excited about eating a fungi-crusted
0:11.0	piece of meat ever.
0:13.0	Alright, oh my house.
0:17.0	Go for it.
0:18.0	Oh my god!
0:19.0	Nice, isn't it?
0:20.0	Wow!
0:21.0	No, you are not tuning into an episode of Bizarre Food.
0:25.0	But that was the sound of Cynthia eating a moldy pork chop.
0:34.4	And it was quite possibly the most delicious pork chop I've ever eaten.
0:39.0	It was covered with a microbe called Koji.
0:41.7	Now if you're Japanese or you're just into all things Japanese, you might be nodding your
0:46.6	head right now.
0:47.6	Koji is like an old friend to you.
0:50.3	Although maybe you weren't expecting to encounter it on a pork chop.
0:53.5	And for everyone else, meet your new obsession.
0:56.1	Okay, my new obsession.
0:57.9	But until recently, I only knew Koji through one of its end products, miso.
1:02.0	If you're not familiar with miso, it's a salty umami-rich fermented bean paste that's
1:06.7	used to make, you know, the miso soup you might order at a Japanese restaurant.
1:10.9	So what is Koji?
	...

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