mirin

I've been cooking a fair amount of Japanese food lately. Along the way I'm learning about new techniques and ingredients, such as mirin. It's an ingredient that I've been using for sometime, though I've never really understood it very well. What I mean by that is that I wouldn't know how to use it when I'm not following a Japanese recipe. mirin is a heavily sweetened wine used to add the sweet component to many Japanese dishes, especially in sauces and glazes (think Teriyaki sauce). Sugar is the recommend substitute.  While researching recipes, it has come to my attention that not all Mirin is the same. Of course that's true of any ingredient really - you can buy good quality and "lesser" quality versions of almost anything, but I did a bit more digging and this is what I found...

So according to wikipedia, there are generally three types of mirin, also labeled as "sweet cooking rice wine" in English. The first is hon mirin (true mirin), which contains alcohol. The second is shio mirin (salt mirin), which contains alcohol as well as 1.5% salt to avoid alcohol tax. The third is shin mirin (new mirin), or mirin-fu chomiryo (mirin-like seasoning), which contains less than 1% alcohol yet retains the same flavor. True mirin is made by fermenting rice and alcohol together for a few months. The process is carefully monitored until the desired flavor is achieved, and the process is stopped before all the sugar is turned into alcohol.

So this is all well and good, but once I get to the supermarket I really didn't remember any of it. So thanks to marketing and brand recognition what I came home with was Kikoman's Aji-Mirin. Aji means flavor, and it's about 8% alcohol - a bit lower than a typical mirin (13-14%).  What really caught my attention though (unfortunately I was already home), was the list of ingredients. Glucose Syrup, Water, Alcohol, Rice, Corn Syrup, and Salt. Sure enough what I'd brought home was some boozy corn syrup, flavored to taste like mirin. So I went back and looked around the store and sure enough there were some other alternatives. What I ended up with this time was Wan Ja Shan brand, incidentally produced in Taiwan. That's probably not ideal, but the list of ingredients is a bit more reassuring. Water, Rice, Rice Vinegar, Sugar, Salt. Now I'm not sure what the ingredient list "should" read like, but I'm certainly happier with this second purchase. Note that the alcohol content is also closer to the typical levels I read about. I love that it's variable by the way.

As for flavor - it's what you would expect. The Kikoman mirin is sweet and syrupy, but the Wan Ja Shan brand has a much more complex flavor. Its still syrupy, but reminds me more of brandy than simple syrup, and you can see where the rice comes in. I don't have a reference point to tell you what taste more "authentic", and I think both of these are shio mirin (with salt, though it certainly doesn't taste salty). So that's what I've learned so far. If anyone has any more advice/input on a good Japanese brand mirin to buy, please share. For now I'll be throwing away what's left of the Kikoman bottle, and I'll upgrade to hon mirin when I have a salary :)