As I contemplate packing to move to a new apartment in a couple of weeks, I am realizing that there is an unopened plastic tub of miso paste in the bottom of my fridge that I moved here from my last apartment - five years ago. I know miso paste is a fermented product and all, but 5 years seems like it might be stretching things a bit.
Should I toss it, or is it still edible? Or am I now the owner of a valuable tub of carefully aged fine miso paste? If the answer to the first question is “maybe,” is there any way to tell besides eating some and then finding out whether I end up in the emergency room with food poisoning?
Nope. But how much is miso paste anyway? 5 bucks or less? The flavors only get stronger the longer they ferment, but at some point you’ve got to say “too much flavor.” Personally, I’d toss it and start over. Fresh start for everything!
The only time we’ve ever discarded miso paste is when we moved house. We’ve got a carton going on 3 years old now with no appreciable change in taste or texture; the stuff’s half salt anyway.
I thought there was no such thing as fine aged miso, but it looks like I was wrong. I found at least one small manufacturer that sells 5-year miso. Some types of miso lose their flavour more quickly and are best eaten within a few months and others are considered good for up to a year or more. Miso is normally fermented in a cool place but I think a fridge might be too cold for it to age properly. Furthermore, as much as I can tell from reading home-made miso recipes, mold can be an issue. Miso that has gone moldy has a strong and somewhat unpleasant smell.
I’m wondering why you’re considering taking it with you if after 5+ years you’ve never even opened it. What makes you think you’re gong to start using it now?
I say chuck it, or give it away. You clearly don’t have any interest in cooking with it. Moving house is too much of a pain to fret over things you have never used.
ETA: I see now that you haven’t said specifically that you’re thinking of keeping it. If you think there’s any reason it’s still good, then give it to a health-nut friend with the proper caveat that it’s been sitting in the cooler for most of a decade.
I’m only moving 10 minutes from where I live now, and I’m certainly schlepping all sorts of other groceries to the new place (though we are trying to use up what we can, especially heavy things like canned goods). It’s no big deal to throw one more plastic tub in with the rest of the groceries.
When I bought the miso, I had this crazy idea that I was going to make miso soup on all those cold Chicago winter evenings. I live half a block from a wonderful homestyle Japanese restaurant, though, so I don’t have much incentive. But the new place, though it has many wonderful qualities (mostly being a) bigger, and b) closer to many of my oldest and dearest friends, and c) a 10-minute walk from Lake Michigan), doesn’t have nearly the variety of hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants in the immediate vicinity. I do cook a LOT, and all kinds of foods (I have an entire bookshelf full of cookbooks, and you don’t even want to know what my pantry looks like), so it wasn’t a crazy idea to think thatI’d dabble in Japanese food.
(I did also buy dried seaweed and dried shrimp at the time, and I even have a cookbook of various Asian noodle dishes and soups. Really, it’s been laziness, at least in terms of Japanese food. I’ve been dabbling in all sorts of other things in the meantime, like Indian - I’ve just never really cooked Japanese and don’t have anyone around who has and is inclined to show me and/or do it with me; thus the inertia.)