This story is long overdue. The original date that I had started this was in March... Will post a story entry on the general process of Koji and its process with miso pastes, or as I prefer to refer to them as Miso Style Amino Pastes. More on that in the future. Let us get into it.
Mycelium has captivated my attention for many years. Even as a child not knowing what this word meant, mushroom hunting in the woods as a child on camping trips, it has always been a part of my life. Little did I know that my career path as chef would lead me into mycelium's. Yes, that is a plural, there are many types of mycelia, but we will keep it short with the two main priority types of mycelia that we use here. We will be looking into Koji, Aspergillus Oryzae, a culinary mold. And psilocybin mycelium fruits in combination with other ingredients.
Ahh I want to type so much but I will keep it short, the topic is regarding a “concept recipe” that includes multiple mycelia! To make miso paste your key ingredients are as follows, Koji inoculated rice in a traditional approach. Your choice grains, cereals, or legumes and salt. When these ingredients are combined, they begin an enzymatic reaction that begins to break down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats creating a nutritionally dense food item. These foods are also packed with probiotics and healthy bacteria that thrive under the correct conditions. The final product also has amazing shelf stable properties and holds zero preservatives and additives.
I developed a mushroom miso couple of years ago that is an amazing component and tool to every kitchen due to its raw ingredients approach this is a highly effective tool to use when designing vegetable and vegan dishes. The infamous mushroom earthiness and naturally occurring MSG makes this an easy choice for chefs. This will also have to be a future post and story entry. Hold this mushroom miso concept in mind.
Since the move to Colorado and the opportunity that has presented itself, we began this mycelium business that leans hard into the world of microbes, bacteria, and enzymes in general. It is a hard concept to express but here we are trying too. With the amounts of fruiting bodies that we had been accumulating through the processes of genetic verification we naturally began to develop solutions and ideas for future product development. One of these ideas was the concept of designing a recipe that could use psilocybin fruits in combination with culinary miso. Boom!
Let us keep it short and sweet, we have successfully made a miso that uses the spent fruiting bodies of psilocybin fruits. After extractions, the left-over pulp or biomass is gathered. Keep in mind that no traces of psilocybin or psilocin active alkaloids are no longer present, after the extraction processes, only a biomass of what used to be mushrooms. These are then combined with typical miso ingredients and anything else that the recipe calls for and processed into a paste. The paste is then packed into fermenting jars, weighed down with stones, and stored away in ideal conditions to ferment. In 3-6 months, the paste is then removed from its container and packed into sterilized jars. Topped with a thin layer of salt and some of the tamari that was reserved.
The concept here is that two types of mycelia come together to recreate bio waste and transform it into something editable. Now this idea has given birth to the curious possibility of an alkaloid active product that could be used for micro dosing? Is it possible to make a miso that contains alkaloid active ingredients? Something that we have noticed about this bio mass, is that the icky nausea one experiences when consuming shrooms is gone, this could also have something to do with the extraction processes or could it also be apart of the enzymes breaking down the fruits?! Many questions and ideas have come up and they keep developing into solutions for the future markets. Thank you for reading.
What do you think? Has this inspired you to research Koji? Or attempt to make mushroom miso? We would love to hear your comments and thoughts. Please contact us via email or social media! We do have a culinary smoked mushroom miso on the website you could check out. Please read the description and details. Stay cosmic!