If you love Asian cuisine and enjoy preparing authentic and traditional dishes, then making homemade miso paste is a skill you might want to acquire. Originating in Japan, miso is a fermented food, made with soybeans. And it has for millennia been a staple in their cuisine. But it’s use long ago spread all over Asia, and is highly popular and included in Korean, Chinese, and many other Asian cuisines, as well.
Large Barrels of Fermenting Miso at Maruya Hatcho Co., Japan (Photo Attributed to Author: Kodachi)
You can, of course, just buy good quality, authentic and traditional miso paste in most major metropolitan areas, around the world. Companies like Maruya Hatcho Co., in Okazaki, Japan, mass produce miso while still using ancient and traditional methods.
You can even purchase from a wide variety here on our online foods store. 
For making homemade miso paste, you will need just a small amount of already prepared miso – it acts as a “starter”, with the bacteria in it initiating the fermentation process.
But there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of making homemade miso paste yourself, and using it to prepare your favorite Asian dishes. And making homemade miso paste also gives you the ability to adjust the taste with what beans you use, the length of fermentation time, additional kinds of ingredients you can include, etc. – which we get into later in this article.
But first, the basic ingredients and methods for …