There’s remarkable variety and depth to be found in a spoonful of fermented bean paste.

Oh, miso paste! Salty, sweet, mellow, earthy, fruity, deeply umami and wonderfully aromatic. A tub of miso paste is a flavour essential, always stashed in my fridge, ready to be dug into with a spoon to elevate a sauce, broth or marinade. 

Miso is a traditional Japanese ingredient, made by fermenting soybeans or other grains with kōji, salt, and sometimes seaweed. For those who don’t know (including myself, 10 minutes ago), kōji is a starter culture from the fungus Aspergillus oryzae, which is also used in the making of soy sauce, sake, shōchū, and rice vinegars. First, the kōji is created, and then it’s mixed with the other ingredients to be broken down, fermented and aged. 

There are almost endless varieties and flavours of miso paste, depending on the base ingredients (as well as soybeans, traditional miso uses barley, rice, rye, hemp seed, buckwheat, millet) and the fermentation time, which varies between a handful of days and several years. 

A quick tangent about soybeans, because what a legume! What a site of culinary innovation! Not only are immature soybeans, kept snug in their green shells, possibly the best bean in existence (the edamame), and not only do fermented soybeans produce miso paste, soy sauce, and tempeh, but unfermented, they’re transformed into soy milk and tofu. 

This is to say, you could have an entire soybean meal – a glass of soy milk, a bowl of miso soup and a plate of soy sauce-seasoned tofu and edamame – and not even realise you’re only eating one bean because their uses are so multidimensional.

Where to find miso paste

Considering a tub of miso is glorious and can last two dozen meals and a year in the fridge, it’s quite reasonably priced. Of course, Asian supermarkets will have the best range (and often the best prices), but you can also find miso paste in the international section of your local supermarket. 

For a fair price comparison, I decided to look at a single brand of miso paste, Mama San, which comes in 650g tubs and is typically the best value option. At New World, Mama San’s miso paste is $6.49, while Pak’nSave sells the same for $5.99. The clear winner, however, is Supie, where the same product is just $5.

Countdown ruined my fair comparison plan by not stocking Mama San miso paste at all. Their closest option was the 500g Fukuyama miso paste tub for $8 (which New World sells for $7.49, and Pak’nSave sells for $6.89). Either way, Supie clearly has it, whereas Countdown…clearly doesn’t.

How to make miso paste terrible

No one likes a big salty lump in their soup, even if it is a lump of lovely miso. Miso paste isn’t as easily dissolvable as it looks, so to avoid lumps, whisk the miso paste into a few spoonfuls of hot water to loosen it up before stirring it into your broth or sauce. 

OK, that’s all I have for you; as something wonderful, miso paste is pretty immune to the terrible. 

How to make miso paste amazing

You may know miso as the soup that starts every great Japanese meal, but it’s also the base for sauces, soups, pickling liquids, spreads and marinades. 

Two of my favourite Japanese dishes are miso glazed salmon and miso and cheddar grilled eggplant, both of which are incredibly simple and delicious. The gist – spread your salmon or halved eggplant with a sweet, salty, sticky miso glaze, and then roast until tender and caramelised. To make enough miso glaze for two servings, combine a tablespoon each of miso paste, mirin and brown sugar, along with a teaspoon of soy sauce. Perfection. 

I’ve also used miso as the base for marinating spicy chicken and veggie skewers, to bring depth and umami to dumpling soup broths and as the binding sauce for honey-glazed chicken mince meatballs. Miso-spiked caramel has also become a bit of a thing, and I’m not opposed in the slightest.  

My most frequently made recipe featuring miso, however, is this creamy miso and peanut butter soba noodle dish, which is full of mushrooms, broccoli and bok choy, all coated in a rich, salty, creamy, slightly sweet sauce, and brightened with a big squeeze of fresh lemon juice, sliced spring onion, and a sprinkle of chilli flakes. Easy, quick, and bloody good.

Wyoming Paul is the co-founder of Grossr, and runs a weekly meal plan that connects to online supermarket shopping.

Read all the previous Ingredients of the Week here.

Alice Neville has had a gutsful of silly supermarket switcheroos. 

Just tick “no substitutes”, they say. It’s an easy solution, they say. Sure, it’s an easy solution until you find yourself entirely sans toilet paper because New World had sold out of all the Purex that day. I guess I should be thankful I wasn’t instead given a roll of sellotape, like one bemused British shopper who I can only hope resisted the urge to use this particular proxy for the original product’s intended purpose. 

For those unfamiliar with the world of online supermarket shopping (I was in this blissful position until I had a baby and browsing the aisles became decidedly niggly), allow me to explain. When placing your order, you can choose to allow all substitutions (if any of your chosen products are unavailable, another of similar value will be given in its place), allow none (if any of your chosen products are unavailable, they’re simply removed from your order), or consider each item on a case-by-case basis.

Initially I took the no, I don’t want no subs route, before the aforementioned dunny roll incident led me reluctantly to change my tune. I now go through a convoluted internal process as I scroll down my shopping cart, for each product painstakingly weighing up the risks of either course of action. Do I put it all on the line and risk going without, or throw caution to the wind and put my life in the hands of the supermarket gods, AKA the teenager likely putting my order together.

Some items are an absolute no: booze, for one. For me, the prospect of ending up with, say, a box of Corona instead of some lovely Parrotdog Bitterbitch is simply too much to bear, so I gird my loins, brace myself for the very real prospect of finding myself beerless, and tick no subs. Fresh produce? To be honest, I usually avoid purchasing sight unseen, but if desperate times are calling for desperate measures (read: scurvy is threatening) and I throw a few apples or a head of broccoli into my online cart, again I will tick no subs.

Other categories are not so black and white, requiring the online shopper to go all math lady and ponder complex economic models like supply and demand. What is the likelihood of this particular product, one must ask oneself, being unavailable on this particular day? New Whittaker’s flavour out, for example? There may well be a rush on it, meaning if one is to allow substitutions, one could be stuck with, I don’t know, gender reveal chocolate. One must then ponder what is a worse fate: eating extremely mediocre coconut chocolate that plays into tired gender tropes, or eating no chocolate at all. (Yes, I’m aware the gender reveal chocolate was a limited edition that is no longer available, but this is a hypothetical situation.)

Because, as much as I’d like to believe those ads about the personal shoppers hand-picking you the shiniest apple while smiling beatifically, going down the “allow substitutes” route can feel like playing Russian roulette. Just last week I ordered a humble packet of Griffin’s gingernuts, a staple surely no self-respecting supermarket would ever run out of. Or so I thought. My lovely ’nuts were switched for Super Wines, a truly depressing biscuit that disintegrates into sludge if it so much as senses the presence of a hot beverage in the general vicinity. I get that the person putting together my order was stuck between a rock and a, um, spiced baked good here, as there is no suitable substitute for this king among dunkers, but surely a Krispie would have been more appropriate?

It gets worse, or so a quick survey of my colleagues suggests, with some supermarket switch-ups descending into pure parody. One poor soul who ordered a large shaker of table salt was given dozens of tiny 10g packs of the stuff instead. Another, animal product-eschewing colleague had their oat milk switched for – and I shit you not – goat milk. 

This begs the question: what guidelines do our grocery overlords follow when selecting substitutions? Goat for oat hints at a rhyme-based policy. Sure, having Dr Seuss pack your groceries may sound cute until you’re serving your apple crumble with mustard and dipping carrot sticks into a tub of inaugural NZ Idol winner Ben Lummis. 

I was all set to blame computers – the cause of most modern ills – for this situation. The internet, rather than trying to cover its arse, backed up the theory, with Google returning sad stories from all over the world of supermarket substitution snafus caused by apps and algorithms gone rogue. 

With my fist poised, ready to shake furiously in the general direction of “technology”, I put in a quick call to each member of Aotearoa’s grocery duopoly, demanding they reveal their substitute-selecting secrets. Imagine my surprise when both Countdown and Foodstuffs cheerfully told me there was no app – just people who undergo training in how to select “like-for-like” products when a customer’s chosen item is out of stock. This revelation shook me to my very core. You mean Super Wine-gate was not the work of some sentient AI nightmare, but the twisted mind of a human who walks among us? Somehow, that’s even more terrifying.