Mirin Taste Test: Kikkoman vs Morita.
We have too many bottles of Mirin, the sweet Japanese cooking wine. Time for a taste test to winnow down the supply. Kikkoman Aji-Mirin, the brand you probably have in your pantry as well, is the obvious keeper. Or is it?
The ingredients in Kikkoman Aji-Mirin according to the label are Glucose Syrup, Water, Alcohol, Rice, Corn Syrup, Salt. The most important ingredient for this “rice seasoning”, namely rice, does not appear till the fourth ingredient. The taste is overwhelmingly sugary with just a hint of a rice wine element. Boil it down, and you could use this on pancakes.
Compare to Morita Yuuki Mirin, a higher end product which is widely available including on Amazon (affiliate link!). It’s superior in every way. Yes, it’s sweet. But there is underlying complexity. You can recognize the clean dry taste of fermented rice and also a definite hint of alcohol. Ingredients for this one are Organic Rice, Organic Malted Rice, Salt, Organic Sugar, Alcohol. Different, no?
For a few more $$ you can get Osawa Mirin, a product that is aged 9 months and contains no added sugar. Ingredients are Organic Sweet Rice, Organic Distilled Rice Wine (water, organic sweet rice, koji seed), Organic Rice Koji (Rice, koji seed), Sea Salt.
Recommendation: if you have a bottle of Kikkoman Aji-Mirin, send it straight to the garbage and replace with one of the other two choices, That’s what we’re doing at Burnt My Fingers, and you know what penny pinchers we are. Since we already have a bottle of Morita we’ll use that up then treat ourselves to Osawa.
While we’re at it, how about a comparison to Xiaoxing, the go-to cooking wine for Chinese (especially Szechuan) recipes. It’s a very different product. To our palate it’s like a watered down dry sherry with salt added (to skirt any alcohol regs by making it a “cooking wine”). We would certainly consider an actual dry sherry as a substitute, and while we’re at it a nice cream sherry could probably stand in for Morita Yuuki Mirin. But the mirin is cheaper, so save the sherry for your drinking pleasure. Kampai!
