Simplifying Meal Prep with Ueda Junko’s Healthy, Delicious Homemade Mirin-based Fermented Sauces

Want to bring out the great taste of colorful, juicy seasonal ingredients? It’s time to get out some Japanese fermented seasonings.

Here culinary expert Ueda Junko explains how to make three simple fermented sauces featuring genuine mirin, a sweet rice wine that she describes as a “fermented umami seasoning.” You just combine it with a few other basic fermented seasonings. She also shares suggestions for serving these sauces. In addition, she talks about how to easily incorporate another of her favorites, sauerkraut, into meals.

Fermented seasonings are part of Japanese life. What a shame to let them rot on the shelf!

Junko was making her own salted koji (rice malt) and fermenting her own miso before it became a thing. So she has some experience preparing fermented foods at home.
“But it’s a lot of work to keep it up. In Japan, there are loads of fermented seasonings available on the market, and a great deal of ingenuity and effort go into making them. Now I focus on making smart use of store-bought seasonings and incorporating them into daily meals.”

If you’re Japanese, the fermented foods you’re doubtless most familiar with and turn to first are things like soy sauce, mirin, sake, and miso. A stock of these basic fermented seasonings is to be found in every Japanese home. They’re great sidekicks that enhance any meal. They don’t just serve as flavorings; they also add richness and umami.

“What a shame it would be if you only ever used them in the same old way or didn’t even know how to use them. You can make your daily meals more varied depending on what combination of basic seasonings you use with which preparation technique.”

Get the most out of genuine mirin by blending it with other seasonings.

One seasoning Junko particularly values is hon mirin or “genuine mirin.” This is a sweet rice wine made by saccharifying and aging glutinous rice, rice koji, and shochu or alcohol. The koji mold breaks the starches in the rice down into glucose and the protein down into amino acids.

“That’s why hon mirin has such an elegantly smooth, sweet flavor and so much umami and richness. It’s the ultimate Japanese fermented umami seasoning. To get the most out of it in your daily cooking, I’d suggest preparing a few blended sauces with it.”

Hon mirin is an alcohol-based seasoning made from rice. There are other similar products. “Mirin-style seasoning,” which contains no alcohol, is a blend of sugars and acidulants. “Mirin-type seasoning” is a fermented seasoning containing salt. Each has a different character.

These sauces can be blended using seasonings you already have at home, yet they’re incredibly handy. Once you’ve prepared a batch, says Junko, they save you time flavoring your cooking.

“Add rice vinegar to hon mirin, and you get mirin-sweetened vinegar sauce. It’s an easy way to make a delicious sweetened vinegar. Mix hon mirin with miso, and you get mirin miso sauce, an elegantly sweet-tasting miso sauce. Combine it with soy sauce, and you get sweet and salty mirin soy sauce, an all-purpose sweet and salty seasoning. In all three, the seasonings blend better with each other than if you were to use sugar. The sweetness is milder.”

Each of these sauces makes a handy dressing.

Recipe for making the 3 homemade hon mirin-based fermented sauces

Delicious ways to serve each homemade hon mirin-based fermented sauce

〈Mirin-sweetened vinegar sauce〉
Mirin-sweetened vinegar sauce can be used for a variety of dishes typically made with sweetened vinegar. These include sushi, amazuae (vegetables in sweetened vinegar), stir-fries, and nanbanzuke, a type of deep-fried marinated fish. “If you’re using it to make vinegared rice for sushi, you might want to add a little salt. Tweak it to suit whatever you’re making.”

This sauce lets you quickly fix up a bowl of chirashizushi. Prepare a batch of sushi rice, then top with grilled salmon, Japanese scrambled egg, and snow peas. It’s simple enough to make on the busiest of days. And the colors are gorgeous.

〈Mirin miso sauce〉
Mirin miso sauce can be used as is for dressing boiled or steamed vegetables. “To enjoy a different flavor, add lemon or yuzu zest.”
You can also glaze vegetables, konjac, tofu, and other ingredients with it, then grill them to make what’s called dengakuyaki. Or you can use it as a marinade for meat or fish. “For a western twist, try adding honey or mustard.”

Nanohana dressed with mirin miso sauce is a treat for the eyes. This sauce is also great with snap peas or wild plants.

〈Sweet and salty mirin soy sauce〉
You can instantly make delicious-tasting teriyaki by glazing meat or fish with this sauce. “Or dilute it with broth to make a type of stock called happodashi. This can be used for all kinds of things: as broth for udon, for stewing vegetables to make nimono, or as a dipping sauce for tempura.”

Chicken thighs with fresh onions: a spring version of teriyaki.

Enjoy store-bought sauerkraut more by understanding it better.

Junko has a profound knowledge of French cuisine, and one pickled food she’s fond of is sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is salted cabbage fermented in lactic acid bacteria. Among other things, it’s used to make choucroute, a stewed dish from the Alsace region of France.

While she often makes her own sauerkraut when she has some cabbage left over, she also finds the store-bought variety indispensable.
“Foreign cabbage is different from the Japanese variety. It’s got a really firm texture. It’s very chewy, and it doesn’t lose shape when you boil it. It’s quite handy, so you might want to try using it depending on what you’re making.”

Right: Junko’s homemade sauerkraut. Massage cabbage with 2% salt, leave at room temperature for several days to just under a week, and ferment in lactic acid bacteria. Left: Store-bought sauerkraut in a jar.

Sauerkraut can be used to make more than choucroute!

Before using store-bought sauerkraut, the trick is to reboil it after washing it in cold water and removing any sour or off notes.

“It can be stewed with pork belly or sausages and potatoes to make choucroute, of course. It also tastes great quickly sauteed and simmered with sliced onions, bacon, juniper berries, and white wine. It goes well with meat dishes, and it tastes good cold, so it makes a nice snack with a drink or a nice garnish for curry. Of course, it’s also okay to eat it just as it is.”

Sauteed and simmered sauerkraut makes a great palate cleanser or snack with a drink.