Shiokoji （塩麹）

Shiokoji (salted rice malt - 塩麹) is a traditional Japanese condiment made from fermented malted rice, salt and water. And it has been used as condiment in varies way with fish, meat and vegetable. Recently Shiokoji started to gain attention from more people when enzyme diets became popular.

Thanks to Derrick from sgfoodonfoot who shared with me some of his Japanese Condiments which he think would be useful for me to explore new recipes with. I am not sure where we could get this Shiokoji in Singapore but perhaps MEIDI-YA or Isetan might have. Or if you come across this in Singapore, do drop me comment or email too.

From some read up, it states that Shiokoji is good for both health and cooking as there is an enzyme in koji which breaks down carbs and protein in meat and fish and at the same time helps to tender the meat. On top of those mentioned, Shiokoji also contains enzymes which help digestion, speed up metabolism and excretion which is good for diet, constipation, detox, skin, stress and etc.

To me, Shiokoji is something like our Chinese red wine lees (made with rice/glutinous rice and wine yeast) which we used to cook confinement food. But the two are different in terms of colour and taste where Shiokoji is more towards savory as compared to wine lees which are slightly sweet with alcohol taste and fragrance.