No new photos 'yet'... I bought a pepper mill, and ground up some koji rice with it... it was kind of hard on my hand, ( weak hands )... so wasn't the ideal method. It did however make a nice uniform white powder, much more uniform than it was when I used mortar and pestle.
I sprinkled the stuff liberally over three cheap strip steaks.... Before putting the powdered Koji rice on, I trimmed off must of the fat around the edge ( usually the fat on the outside of a strip steak isn't that good anyway ).
One of these steaks, I ate last night, it had only been 24 hours with the Koji... absolutely no strange taste. I probably added more pepper than I should have, because while the steak did actually taste good, and was tender, it was hard to notice if there was any other 'good' flavors that were not directly related to the salt or pepper that was used. I think it was a bit better than if I hadn't used the Koji rice, but I can't say with absolute certainty. One other difference with this steak vs the first one I did... I rinsed the koji off with water, rather then scraping it off with a knife. I think this resulted in getting more of the koji off the steak , before I cooked it, not sure what effect that might have had on the process. It was easy...
I have two more , that I plan to cook tonight, these I won't season quite so heavily... but I'm expecting at least as good experience as my first test went.
This time, I placed all the steaks in zip lock bags after putting the koji on them... My goal is to make a very easy to use process, something that is just barely more effort than cooking a steak right out of the package. I'll try to get some photos of the steaks I cook tonight.
Meanwhile, I have a hand turned coffee grinder that should arrive today. I hope this is easier to use than the pepper mill was to grind up my Koji rice. I'll maybe share my thoughts on that grinder too.
Anyone else do any Koji rice testing lately?
