This content provides a simple, accessible recipe for making mushroom garum, an umami-rich liquid seasoning inspired by ancient fermented sauces, using koji enzymes to break down mushrooms.
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Today I'm going to show you how to make
mushroom garum. I'm going to keep the
recipe simple as a great introduction to
how you can make these umami rich sauces
that can add savoriness and depth to
almost anything you're cooking.
Originally, garams were fermented fish
sauces used in ancient [music] Rome. The
modern versions use enzymes from koji to
create rich savory liquid seasonings.
Just a dash in a broth or a marinade can
help to give it instant depth. This
style of garam making is inspired by the
work of a lot of other chefs and
restaurants as well as NM who really
helped popularize a lot of these modern
fermentation techniques. I'll be keeping
today's recipe simple, but there is tons
of scope to make different variations on
this. And if you want to explore more
around fermentation, I'll put a link to
some of my other videos down in the
video description.
So for our ingredients, we just have
mushroom, cooji, water, and salt. With
the mushrooms, you can use whatever
you'd like here. I've gone with chestnut
mushrooms for a nice simple accessible
version. You could easily use other
mushrooms, though, if you want to work
with other particular flavors. Next up,
we have our cooji. And if you want to
learn more about koji, I do have a video
all about it and how to make it, but in
short, it's an inoculated rice that's
used in lots of Japanese fermentations.
You can make it yourself, but it's also
increasingly easy to buy online, too.
So, that's another good option if you're
just starting out.
Then, we have the smoked salt. Salt is
important both for the finished flavor,
but also from a food safety perspective.
You could just use a plain salt. And I'm
not going for an overly smoky flavor
here, but I do like that the smoked salt
adds just a little bit more depth while
still keeping the recipe really, really
simple. And then lastly, we just have
nice fresh water. We're going to combine
these. But first, just one note on an
ingredient that I'm not using, and that
is oats. Noma does use those in the
garam that they sell and I've made
versions with it and I do think it
rounds out the flavors and can add a
little bit more body to the sauce. But
for this version, we're just going to
stick with mushrooms and do a very
simple stripped back version. So, first
off, we're going to blend our mushrooms
along with the cooji smoked salt and the water.
water.
Once that's done, we'll transfer the
mixture into jars, leaving just a little
headroom. It's a good idea to place a
food grade layer just on the top surface
here just to stop too much evaporation
during the process.
Then we're going to place these jars
into a rice cooker on the keep warm
function to hold it at about 60° C for 3
to 4 weeks. You could also use a
dehydrator or a fermentation chamber,
but for a small scale like this, a rice
cooker works great. There's no need to
stir it or touch it during this process.
Just let the enzymes do their thing and
you can start to taste it after a couple
of weeks, but I'd recommend leaving it
up to the full four weeks really to get
a nice rounded flavor. I will mention
here that this isn't really traditional
fermentation. What's happening at this
higher temperature is that the enzymes
in the cooji are breaking down the other
ingredients into amino acids and umami.
Also, because we're holding this at that
higher temperature of 60°, you start to
get some of these mayard browning
reactions happening, and those are what
give you some of those nice toasted,
warm, savory notes. After the first day
or two, you'll see that the solids and
the liquid are slightly separating. And
after 2 to 3 weeks, you'll start to see
the liquid starting to darken and the
flavors are really starting to develop.
I'd recommend trying this at about the 4
week mark. At that point, you'll have
this lovely dark liquid that you can
strain away from the solids. That
resulting garam is your seasoning. But
you shouldn't throw away the solids
either. You can dehydrate them and use
them to create spice blends or use them
in other seasoning or even as a cure for
something like the vegetables that I use
to make my cooji vegetable shakuterie. [music]
And now that your garam's ready, you can
start to have a think about how you want
to use it. It's salty and umami rich. So
in the most basic terms, you can think
about using it in a similar way to soy
sauce or tamari. I've used it as part of
a deeply umami rich marinade for tofu
before for dishes like this one.
And then also as a liquid seasoning for
things like this raggue that's made with
tomatoes really slow roasted in the wood
burning oven. It's topped with potato
confied in smoked oil and finished in an
oat cream and burger malt sauce. I'm
going to cover more about that dish in
the future I think. But this umami rich
liquid seasoning is an important part of
it. [music] In a much simpler everyday
way you can put a splash of this into
all sorts of different sauces. Even
something like a quick pasta sauce will
really get a little extra kick from it.
You can use it as a glaze for barbecued
mushrooms, drizzle it on rice, use it in
dressings. It's extremely versatile and
particularly effective in things like
marinades. If you're interested in going
deeper into fermentation, I have a whole
section on my channel where we go into
koji and miso and other fermentation
techniques. And you can also take a look
at my cookbook if you're curious, which
I'll link below. I hope you'll have a
little explore of the channel if you
found this useful. As always, thanks for
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