Fermentation Atlas · Side
Natto
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with ferment tang with real depth behind it.
Ingredients
- 500 g small dried soybeans
- 2 litres water, for soaking
- 0.1 g natto spore powder (Bacillus subtilis var. natto), or 20 g live natto
- 10 ml water, boiled and cooled to 70C (158F), to carry the spores
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
FermentationSoaking dried goods back to life
Allergen screen
Found: soy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the beans for 18 hours in cool water, until they have roughly tripled in weight and one crushes between finger and thumb with no hard core left. 600 min
- Drain and cook until a bean smears to paste under light thumb pressure: 40 minutes at full pressure, or about 4 hours steamed. 40 min
- Scald the tray, spoon and cover with boiling water, then stir the spore solution through the beans while they are still around 70C (158F), hot enough to kill rivals and harmless to spores.
- Spread 2 cm deep, cover with foil pricked all over so air still reaches the surface, and hold at 40 to 42C (104 to 108F) for 22 hours. 600 min
- It is done when a white bloom coats the beans and a lifted spoon pulls long threads. Refrigerate 24 hours before eating: the strings tighten and the ammonia settles back. 600 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
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