Apr 27,2023
In the My Choice Fermented Gourmet Dishes series, we ask food professionals to recommend their favorite fermented foods. Our guest for this second installment is Horie Sawako, who excels at making daily meals that energize the body and soul of her family.
Horie, who always has homemade amazake [a sweet drink made from koji rice malt] on hand, says with a laugh: “The amount of amazake we consume at home is quite something.” This is because she drinks amazake hot and has it in smoothies as well as makes extensive use of amazake in her cooking. Let’s zoom in on the amazake magic that fortifies Horie’s daily meals.
Amazake can be stored frozen. Freezing it flat in a sealed bag makes easy to snap off and use just the amount you need.
Amazake is so nutritious that it’s been called the drinkable IV drip. It is most familiar to people as a health drink, but Horie has other recommended ways to use amazake other than as a drink.
“Amazake is a huge part of preparing ingredients at home. I’ve always had homemade amazake in the fridge for five years now.”
As culinary expert Horie Sawako explains, her interest in amazake goes back some five years.
“Chef Iwamoto at Domenica D’oro, an Italian restaurant in Minami-Aoyama, taught me how to prepare ingredients using amazake. Since then, I’ve grown so attached to amazake that I can’t imagine a life without it.”
While salted koji rice malt and miso are well known ways to season ingredients with the power of fermentation, amazake’s strength is that it brings out the best in ingredients without changing their flavor.
“I love salted koji and I think it’s delicious, but it gives food and ingredients a strong Japanese flavor. The appeal of salted koji is that it adds a distinctive koji taste. On the flip side, even if you soak or marinate ingredients in amazake, they won’t absorb the aroma of koji or the sweetness of amazake. The sweetness comes from the fermentation, so it doesn’t interfere with the ingredients’ flavor, and when you eat it, you can feel its umami taste. It’s super convenient because you can use it with anything, whether it’s a Japanese, Western, or Chinese dish. And because amazake contains absolutely no salt, you can decide how much salt to add yourself.”
Place two thick, damp dish towels over the mixture in the rice cooker with the keep-warm setting on, and six hours later you have delicious amazake
Horie always has homemade amazake on hand at home because she uses so much every day. She uses her rice cooker’s warming function to speed up the fermentation process.
Amazake is incredibly easy to make. Mix 300 grams of broken up rice koji with 600 mL of 60℃ water in the rice cooker’s pot and then cover the ingredients with two damp dish towels. Turn on the rice cooker’s keep-warm setting but don’t close the lid. After warming the mixture for six hours, your amazake is done. Stir the mixture every two to three hours and re-moisten the towels if they dry out.
“Once the amazake is ready, blend it smoothly with a hand mixer before storing it in a container. Smoothing out the koji’s graininess makes food preparations easier.”
Blend the freshly made amazake until it’s smooth with a hand mixer before storage
“Other than stirring it once or twice while it ferments, you can just leave it in the rice cooker. Do note that it takes a full six hours to make and that you have to let it cool down completely before using it to prepare fish or meat. I always have some in stock so I can use it whenever I want. But if I run out by accident, I will use store-bought amazake. If using amazake for food preparation, I recommend the thick type over the lighter drinkable type.”
Marinate salted salmon fillets with amazake and saké. The fillets can be frozen as is. Defrost and clean the fillets under running water before use.
Leave out enough freshly made amazake for one to two days use and store the rest in the freezer in airtight freezer bags. Horie’s routine is to make the next batch of amazake when she opens the last bag.
“If you marinate meat or fish in amazake, it tastes better and keeps them fresh longer as well. That’s why I always buy big chunks of meat when I find them on special, and I never miss specials on fish fillets. (laughs) Even if you don’t plan on using the meat or fish that night, you can still buy them and marinate them for later. They come in handy on days when you have nothing prepared or no time.”
With a block of pork for example, make a marinade of amazake equivalent to 10 percent of the meat’s weight and salt equivalent to two percent of the weight and marinate the meat in a plastic bag. For 500 grams of meat, you would use 50 grams of amazake and 10 grams of salt. Let the meat marinate in the fridge for at least a day, and then simply boil the meat when you want to eat. The marinade can be stored in a fridge for about a week.
“The taste is night-and-day different from pork marinated in just salt. The result is salted pork that is unbelievably moist and tender. Similarly, if you coat chicken breast with amazake, it will turn out super juicy, never dry, or if you prepare oysters or cod milt with amazake, it will eliminate their distinctive smell and make them plump and juicy. With fish fillets, I coat them in a marinade of equal parts amazake and saké. Even if you microwave the fillets, they will come out flaky with absolutely no fishy smell. Using amazake as a quick dressing on tomatoes or leafy vegetables is delicious too. I like using amazake even when pickling kimchi. The fermentation power of amazake seems to pull out the very best of the ingredients. It’s almost hilarious how versatile amazake is.”
Horie can’t stop thinking of ways to use amazake to prepare food.
The umami of salted salmon is the perfect match for the lemon’s refreshing acidity
Horie gave us a recipe for a slightly fancy pasta dish that includes salted salmon marinated with amazake. Because cooking the fish doesn’t make it tough, it fuses perfectly with the sauce. The concentrated umami of the salted salmon gives the pasta a deep, rich taste.
Here is another dish featuring salmon marinated in amazake. Elevate the taste of regular salmon rice balls to specialty store levels with salmon prepared in amazake.
Pat dry the salted salmon that has been marinated in equal amounts of amazake and saké, and place the salmon on a microwave-safe plate. Double over the thinner meat at the tail and then heat in a microwave at 600 watts for about a minute and a half without covering the salmon with plastic wrap. Adjust the heating time according to the weight of salmon.
The salmon can be microwaved without any covering. For an 80-gram fillet, heat for about 90 seconds.
“You can have the amazake salmon by itself as a breakfast dish and it’s handy for bento lunches as well. If you remove the bones and skin and break it up, you can transform it into a must-have rice ball. Even marked-down salmon will come out so tender and flaky with no odd tastes that you’d think it was purchased at an expensive gourmet shop.”
You will never go wrong remembering to use all-purpose amazake to prepare ingredients, whether meat, fish, or vegetables. Amazake’s magic is in how ingredients become more delicious almost by themselves just by soaking or marinating them in amazake.
“Thanks to the fermentation power of amazake, even if you overcook something a little, it will still turn out moist and tender. It’s a trusty helper that will improve your cooking without secret tricks. I recommend everyone try amazake to prepare their food.”
The next installment of this series will pass the baton on to cooking expert Izawa Yumiko. Be sure not to miss Izawa’s recommended fermented gourmet dishes that let you enjoy healthy fermented food in keeping with the seasons.
Culinary expert
Culinary expert
A cooking expert and nutritionist, Horie grew up surrounded by cooking, as her grandmother is Horie Yasuko, a pioneering home cooking researcher, and her mother is the well-known cook and author Horie Hiroko. She studied cooking abroad in Italy and South Korea. She took over a cooking school that has been operating for over 50 years and often appears on TV and in magazines and books. Horie has an established reputation for recipes that are easy to make at home and thrill families. She is the author of many books, including The Convenient Handbook of Delicious 1:1:1 Seasonings (Ikeda Publishing).
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