"UMAMI" SHOYU NO TANE by Oku
A MIX KIT THAT CHANGES YOUR SOY SAUCE INTO "UMAMI" SOY SAUCE.
"Oku shoten" (オク or 奥商店) is a "Kezuribushi (shavings of dried bonito)" company in Moji, of which was founded in 1925. Nearly for 100 years, Oku has been producing and selling shavings of dried bonito and dried kelp. Such dried seafoods are fundamental of making soup stock called "Dashi" (ダシ or 出汁) in Japanese.
Oku has been distributing the fundamentals to local Japanese restaurants and highly praised. It is surprising work of the company that for nearly a century, chosen by professionals who have strict standards.
With such highly evaluated and long term experience on Dashi ingredients, they've developed a new product called "UMAMI SHOYU NO TANE".
It is a base kit that is used by simply mixing with soy sauce and it becomes "Dashi shoyu" (Soy sauce with dashi).
KANMON UMAMI SHOYU NO TANE.
Price: ¥1,296
To use, take out oxygen absorber. Pour soy sauce of your choice. Leave for 2 weeks and done. Can be refilled and reused for about 3 month.
Put "Katsuobushi" and dashi shoyu on tofu. It might be the healthiest food I've ever known.
Adding extra flavor on spaghetti. By using more dashi in your food should drastically reduce the amount of salt. Hey you with high blood pressure, you'd want to try one of these.
I truly wonder how these taste. Dried bonito used in these products are called "Honkarebushi" (本枯れ節), the top grade of such. I prepared soy sauce and olive oil.
As soon as opened out and inner cap, rich smell of smoked and dried bonito spread. Not too fishy. That is because Honkarebushi is made in between 6 months and 12 months. Repeatedly fermented by being sprayed mold and dried by sun.
Taking out oxygen absorber. Saving a trouble by sticking the absorber to rectangle slip. Just pull out the slip, the oxygen absorber come with it.
Prepared 200ml of light flavor soy sauce. If you prefer thicker soy sauce, then use it.
Pouring part was easy. Thanks to wide bottle's neck. I think you can pour directly from your soy sauce bottle.
It doesn't say on the box but 200ml seems correct amount.
Put the inner cap back on. Make sure it's not loose. Pull out the knob in center and remove when it's ready.
Used black tape and wrote the day when prepared. It takes 14 days to UMAMI to bled.
Prepared one more with olive oil. Heat up the oil and poured into the bottle. I don't think the heating part is mandatory. The reason why I did it because I want to taste it earlier than 14 days.
After 2 weeks, I am thinking of compare UMAMI soy sauce and olive oil. Hopefully, have time to cook with these.
2 weeks later...
More than 2 weeks, to be honest. Let's see what they are like now.
This is the same soy sauce that I used to make UMAMI shoyu. Nor murky, clear.
Now, this is UMAMI soy sauce that I prepared (over) 2 weeks ago. 2 things are noticeable; smell and a kind of murky change. The smell, apart from soy sauce, bonito's fishy smell is lightly but noticeable.
This is the same olive oil used to make UMAMI oil. Again, not murky and clear.
This is olive oil poured into UMAMI bottle and left in fridge for a while. Do you see tiny bits sunk on the plate? (Maybe too tiny to see.) Before pouring into the bottle, the olive oil was heated to 80 degrees. Thanks to the preparation I did, the smell is much stronger than the soy sauce.
The question is what to do with those. The use of soy sauce is fairly simple, use it to add in cooking or use it as sauce. In my opinion, use as sashimi sauce is not recommended because it will overwhelm natural taste of raw fish.
So, how about the oil? Well, here' what I would normally do.
Mackerel spagetti.
Ingredients:
UMAMI olive oil
Tinned macherel
Garlic
Red pepper
Japanese mustard spinach
Onion
Spaghetti
Salt
Black pepper
Herbs
Adding mushroom or using spinach instead of mustard spinach works, too.
Heat the oil. Start boiling water for spaghetti.
Put garlic in when the oil is well heated. Stir on low heat until the color of the garlic becomes lightly brownish.
Put onion in. You could also put Red pepper if you prefer to be more spicy.
Put mackerel from the tin and crush while stir frying. I use lightly salted mackerel because spaghetti is boiled with salted water.
Put red pepper, black pepper, herbs and stir for a while. Check the taste and add salt for your preference.
Add boiling water from spaghetti and stir a bit more to emulsify. This process makes the sauce to coat spaghetti well.
When it's done, mix with boiled spaghetti and serve on a plate. Sprinkle parsley to finish.
Itadakimasu! This mackerel spaghetti is one of my staple lunch but used much less salt compared to before using UMAMI oil. Plus, the smell became much more richer and nicer.
Bona Appetit.
Where to buy: "Oku"
*This store will be shut down from December of 2017.
Address: 1-8-28, Yanagimachi, Moji ward, Kitakyushu city, Fukuoka
Open hours: 9:00 to 17:30
Closed on: Sunday and national holiday
UMAMI SHOUYU is also available at stores in below.
8 Shops in Kitakyushu city.
Kokura Izutsuya.
Abukuriya.
AEON Yahata.
Liaison mart.
Halloday in Sunny side mall.
Moji port retro, Yorimichi.
Kitakyu Iito corner in Hallo day.
Kitakyu Iito corner in AEON Tobata.
1 Shop in Fukuoka city.
Ippin-Hyakusai.
Oku official site.
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