Kinako

Kinako (farine de soja grillé)

What it is

Kinako is nothing but soybeans dry-roasted and milled, and the name means, flatly, yellow flour. The roast is the whole of it — the same beans boiled taste of very little, which is why kinako is a finishing ingredient and never a cooking one.

In the kitchen

Toast it thirty seconds in a dry pan before use; kinako that has sat on the shelf smells of cardboard and the heat brings it straight back. Cut it with sugar at four to one plus a good pinch of salt, or it clings to the tongue and dries the mouth.

Goes with

Adzuki bean Okinawan black sugar Mizuame Glutinous rice Matcha Honey

Same species

Chunjang Dark soy sauce Doenjang Douchi Edamame Fermented bean curd

Also used with

Mugwort Shiratamako Buckwheat tea Warabi-ko (bracken starch) Wasanbon sugar Hojicha

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