Locavore NXT

Miso making for our daily production needs.
We make quite a lot of it, using rice koji, something legume and salt. Once the fresh miso is mixed, it gets rolled into balls, thrown strongly into the fermentation vessels and pressed down tightly by hand. The point is to remove as much air as possible, because unwanted air usually means unwanted things growing inside. After that, we ferment it for 1-4 months. Technically, that’s still quite young for miso, but in the Indonesian climate, things move a little faster, so we adjust the process until it matures just right for us.
Fermentation teaches patience. And occasionally, force. :-)

As an important part of the LabX ecosystem, the Fermentation kitchen is always busy finding new ways to work with new and overlooked ingredients, as well as transforming the leftovers into something deliciously useful again. A few of them might soon be available for your kitchen too.

Work in progress, as most good things are.

Soybean, a humble ingredient is turned into our own soy sauce, which we produce in decent volumes, around 40 litres per gentong (clay barrel). It takes a minimum of six months, sometimes up to two years. Once ready, our Fermentation team ‘harvests’ two distinct soy sauce styles, Chinese and Taiwanese, each with its own character. Some get slowly cooked down into sweet soy sauce, and the leftover pulp gets dried and turned into our own gochujang.