June 29, 2022 food, food ferments, koji, recipes Ainslie Forbes

Koji Recipe: Spicy Shio Koji Fish

Personally, I love shio koji and how easy it is to use, but sometimes I want to spice things up! This is exactly where this recipe comes from. I had some older shio koji sitting in the back of the fridge, some dried hot peppers from some hot sauce experiments, and decided I wanted to make a shio koji hot sauce. While the consistency wasn’t ideal as a hot sauce, I reimagined it as a marinade and it was perfect!

Note: recipe is only for the fish above!

Ingredients

142g or Half of your Escarpment Labs Freeze Dried Koji
241g of water
38g of salt
3 dried peach ghost peppers, or other peppers/hotsauce of your choice. 
If using other peppers add more/less peppers depending on the scoville level and your  taste
1 salmon filets, you can substitute for your favorite fish

Steps

Making Spicy Shio Koji

  1. Add all of the koji, salt and water into a container. 
  2. Stir well.
  • All of the rice should be submerged.
  • Add your dried peppers.
  • Let soak overnight.
  • On the next day, blend with a blender or stick blender.

Making the Fish

  1. Place fish flesh side up in a shallow bowl and cover with spicy shio koji.
  2. Let sit in mixture for at least 1 hour, if left longer the fish will absorb more spicy flavour.
  3. While the fish is marinating, prepare a baking sheet by lining it with aluminum foil and spraying with some cooking oil.
  4. After an hour, take fish and rice out of the shio koji, pat dry with a towel.
  5. Preheat oven to 325 ℉ and move rack to the middle. 
  6. Place on prepared baking sheet flesh side up.
  7. OPTIONAL: I like to place lemon slices on top of the fish while its cooking. for added flavour.
  8. Bake in oven for around 13 min or until done.