Rice Koji substitute

Substitutes for Rice Koji with ratios

1. 2Shio Koji (Salted Koji Liquid or Paste)

   Different texture

   Use 2 Tbsp shio koji for every ¼ cup fresh rice koji, and remove ½ tsp salt from the recipe

   Rice koji already blended with salt and water and matured into a pourable seasoning.

   What changes

   Stir it into marinades or dressings in place of the loose grains.

   Best for

   marinating fish, marinating chicken, dressings, quick pickles, seasoning vegetables

   For any use where koji is seasoning food rather than fermenting it, this is the practical answer, and it still tenderises because the enzymes survive the salting. Two differences matter. It is salty, roughly 10 percent salt, so you must reduce salt elsewhere or the dish will be aggressive. And it is liquid, so it will not work anywhere the dry grains are structural, such as a miso mash or a nukadoko pickling bed.

2. 3White Miso Thinned With Sake or Water

   Taste and texture differ

   Use 1 Tbsp white miso plus 1 tsp sake for every 2 Tbsp rice koji, in marinades only

   Whisk shiro miso with a little sake or water until it is the consistency of double cream, then coat fish or chicken and rest it for a few hours.

   What changes

   Best for

   marinating salmon, marinating cod, chicken, aubergine glaze, dressings

   Miso is what koji eventually becomes, so it carries the right sweet-savoury amino-acid flavour and will give you a properly delicious marinated fish. What it will not do is the enzymatic work: most retail miso is pasteurised, so it seasons the surface instead of loosening the protein through the flesh, and the fish stays firmer rather than turning silky. It also browns much faster under a grill, so drop the heat and watch it. Not a substitute for making miso, obviously.

3. 4Diastatic Malt Powder or Crushed Malted Barley

   Taste and texture differ

   Use 1 tsp diastatic malt powder for every ¼ cup rice koji, for sweetening only

   Sprouted barley ground to a powder, sold to bakers.

   What changes

   Whisk into warm rice porridge held at about 140F for several hours to sweeten it.

   Best for

   sweetening rice porridge, amazake-style drinks, sweet rice puddings

   Malt carries amylase, the enzyme that turns starch into sugar, so it will genuinely sweeten cooked rice the way koji does and you can make a rough amazake with it. What it lacks is protease, the enzyme that breaks protein into glutamate, and that is where koji's savoury depth comes from. So this works for sweetness and fails completely for miso, soy sauce or anything that needs umami built from protein. The result tastes maltier and cleaner, more like a barley drink than amazake.

4. 5Ready-Made Amazake

   Different texture

   Use in place of the finished amazake the koji was meant to produce

   The sweet, thick, non-alcoholic rice drink that koji is used to make, sold in cartons and pouches at Japanese groceries.

   What changes

   Best for

   sweetening, smoothies, marinades, baking, salad dressings

   If your reason for buying rice koji was to make amazake, buying amazake skips several hours of holding rice at a precise temperature and tastes essentially the same, because it is the same thing finished. It also works as a sugar substitute in dressings and marinades where you wanted koji's gentle sweetness. It cannot be used to start any other ferment, since commercial amazake is pasteurised and the enzymes are dead.

5. 6Grated Pear, Pineapple Juice or Grated Ginger (for the tenderising job only)

   Taste and texture differ

   Use 1 Tbsp grated Asian pear or 2 tsp pineapple juice for every ½ lb meat, marinate 20 to 30 minutes only

   Fruit and ginger carry their own protein-cutting enzymes.

   What changes

   Mix into a soy-and-sesame marinade and keep the contact time short.

   Best for

   tenderising beef, tenderising chicken, Korean-style marinades, quick marinades

   This is the honest least-bad answer when the only reason a recipe reaches for koji is to make meat tender and juicy. Bromelain from pineapple and actinidin from pear and kiwi do break protein down, and quickly. Too quickly, in fact: leave meat in pineapple for two hours and the surface turns mushy and mealy, where koji works slowly and evenly overnight. You also get obvious fruit sweetness and no koji aroma at all, so the dish tastes sweeter and fruitier rather than deeply savoury.