Salted Black Beans

According to Bill Shurtleff at The Soyfoods Center (see the entry for Soyfoods), this fermented, salted, soft black soybean is the oldest recorded soyfood in history, the noble ancestor of miso and soy sauce. It is a rather remarkable new look at a humble black bean, which I have always thrown unthinkingly into sauces and scattered on top of steaming fish and until recently did not even realize was a soybean. Soybeans, I know now, can wear black seed coats as well as yellow ones.

Packaged in heavy plastic bags or round cardboard boxes and typically labeled Salted Black Beans, this popular Chinese seasoning is also known as Chinese black beans, salted beans, fermented black beans, and occasionally ginger black beans. The process is generally the same for all brands: boiling or simmering black soybeans until soft, inoculating them with an Aspergillus oryzae mold, the covering them with a brining solution for six months, with shreds of ginger or orange peel or a dash of five-spice powder occasionally added to season the beans in the final soaking stage.