What is koji?
It is the reason our Tónico tastes the way it does — and it is the reason you have probably eaten it for years without knowing.
Koji is a friendly mold.
Aspergillus oryzae — that's the scientific name. It grows on grains and legumes, eats the starches and proteins, and turns them into amino acids and sugars. In plain kitchen language: it makes food taste deep, slowly, without heat.
Koji is what makes soy sauce taste like soy sauce. It is what makes miso, mirin, sake, and amazake. In Japan, the country named it a national fungus in 2006. We just call it the mold.
It turns chickpea into umami.
Most fermented condiments — soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce — are made with ingredients you cannot grow in Costa Rica. Soy needs a different climate. Anchovies live in colder seas. We did not want to import the basics of our pantry from the other side of the world.
Koji solves that. We inoculate cooked chickpeas with koji spores, let it grow for a few days, and then ferment that koji-rice mass in brine for three weeks. What comes out tastes like a deeper, gentler cousin of soy sauce — with no soy, no wheat, no gluten, and made from chickpeas grown within fifty kilometers of the kitchen.
- No soy.
- Chickpea instead. Suitable for soy-free diets.
- No wheat.
- Naturally gluten-free.
- No MSG added.
- The glutamates that taste like MSG come from the fermentation itself.
- No shortcuts.
- Three to four weeks per batch, not three to four days.
Three things people ask us.
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Is it spicy?
No. Zero heat. The warmth you taste is from ginger and black pepper, not chiles. If you want heat, our fermented hot sauces are coming this fall.
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Why is it cloudy?
Because we don't filter it. The sediment is turmeric and ginger doing what they do. Shake the bottle, taste a drop. The cloudiness is the flavor.
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How long does a bottle last?
Unopened, indefinitely. Opened, about six months in the fridge. Most people finish a bottle in eight to ten weeks of regular cooking.
Still curious? Try the five-minute rice bowl — it's the recipe we send to every new customer.