Miso is not hard to make...

I love making miso, partly because so few people (that I know of) do. It's a lot cheaper than buying it at the grocery store and it lasts for years. It doesn't take that long to start a batch but it needs six months to ferment. I use a couple of 2 gallon ceramic crocks and stagger the batches every 3 months or so. It's pretty idiot-proof; if you do everything right there's no danger. You'll usually have some ugly looking mold on top of your miso but it's completely harmless stuff and you just scrape it off and dispose of it in your compost or yard waste.

Pictured is most of a batch that I started at the end of March. I had already given away a little of it. Probably around five and a half to six quarts. I like to get it out of the crock so I can wash it but it's okay to just scoop some out and refrigerate it and cover the crock and forget about it until you need to get out some more.

I buy Crystal Mountain koji starter at Asian markets and inside the container is a good, simple recipe for making miso. It involves cooking the soybeans and adding the koji and some (non-iodized) salt and mashing and packing into a crock. Then it's covered with some butcher paper and weighted and the crock is loosely covered, in such a way that it can breathe but dust and bugs are kept out. Then you forget about it for six months. The time's gonna go by anyway, why not be fermenting stuff?