Anyone Ever Made Natto?

[surfsteve]

I was just wondering if anyone here has ever tried natto and made it themselves. It's supposed to be good for all kinds of things and if you didn't need to cook the beans it would be totally raw paleo. I wonder if some form of paleo natto exists in nature. Surely somewhere, one would think

[surfsteve]

I got interested in natto when I bought a bottle of nattokinase with serapeptase pills several years back.

I was feeling a little stiff a month or so ago so I took some and though it took away my stiffness it made me dehydrated. Luckily it was cheaper to buy the nattokinase and serapeptase pills separate or my story would have ended there. Rather than quit taking both I decided to try each one separate and it turned out to be the serapeptase that was making me feel dehydrated and foggy and had nothing to do with the nattokinase.

I looked on Ebay and found someone selling an entire 500 gram bag of nattokinase and bid 72 dollars which was the cost of 2 bottles of pills and won it. Suddenly I could afford to take all I wanted and instead of the 1/32nd teaspoon on the bag I was taking half teaspoon fulls at a time. I really liked the way it tasted. Before it came in the mail I tried a bag of natto (the stuff from which nattokinase was extracted.) I also liked the way it tasted but didn't care for it's gritty texture. I discovered though that it made a pretty good base for salad dressing when mixed with vinegar and oil and that soaking it in the dressing decreased the gritty texture. 

Almost forgot to mention that natto is the richest source of vitamin K on the planet. No other food comes close. Also nattokinase is an extract and doesn't contain much if any vitamin K.

By this time I had developed a taste for powdered natto. I watched some videos about traditional natto and the texture looked really gross. Supposedly most westerners are revolted by it as well as many Japanese. Long story short I ordered the cheapest natto I could find from Korea but it is going to take at least several more weeks to arrive in the mail. Meanwhile I turned into a dried natto junkie and used up my entire bag of natto yesterday way before the one I ordered is going to get here. I called an oriental grocery store in town and they only sold fresh natto so I bought a few packages to try but at my present dried natto consumption rate it will cost quite a bit to use them every day. I been reading that natto can be made at home. It is a cultured product and I've made a lot of cultured products (I have culture!) so I started doing some research on how to make it.

This is ironic because I haven't even tried eating the fresh natto and there's a good chance that I wont even like it!   

[surfsteve]

Here are some pretty cool links about natto that were in my windows that I'm about to close up. I hope you like them...

Making the Stinky, Sticky, Slimy Beloved Superfood of Japan: (Natto)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8rCvLzZp4

Making natto from chickpeas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxYcnKsrTZU&index=6&list=WL

Making natto using a rice cooker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI7H1pspd7k

Making natto in a yogurt maker
https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/155232-homemade-natto-using-a-yogurt-maker-japanese-food-anywhere-you-go


After I watched these videos I've decided that first I should try eating some of the natto I bought to see if I even like it. If I do I think I will try combining all the methods in the links above I just posted; making my first batch my own way with pinto beans because I have tons of them on hand. I will cook them in my rice cooker ( I cook them twice, using double the water for rice each time). It is a fool proof way of cooking all kinds of beans including pinto and garbanzo, my two favorites. You just set the rice cooker (twice) and forget about it.

Next I will ferment them with my yogurt maker because my rice cooker isn't digital and the temperature wont go low enough to make natto. Seems like a good idea to put a steralized shop towel over the natto instead of yogurt lids like the guy did in one of the videos I posted.

I will use the remaining natto I bought from the store as starter culture.

I have a lot of experience making cultured foods and have successfully made yogurt, sauerkraut, Pickles, fermented onions, carrots and celery medley and many other vegetables. I've even grown my own mushrooms so I should be able to make natto.  At least I hope so...

Really busy today so it might be a bit before I have a chance to get around to it. Will keep you guys posted...

[surfsteve]

I just tried some of the fresh natto I bought at the store. It's pretty good. Comes with it's own hot mustard and soy sauce in separate packets. which I obviously wont be using when I use it as starter culture. Fresh natto should make even better salad dressing than dried natto.

Here's a video of someone making salad dressing from natto. I been making it from dried natto, adding vinegar, olive oil, dill, sea salt, pepper and hot mustard; but this recipe looks yummy. I just don't have her ingredients on hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHsqXOsyek

Damn. I want some more natto. I could eat a giant bowl of this stuff. It comes in really puny boxes and costs a fortune. Sure hope I can make it myself because it will be a hundred times cheaper.

[surfsteve]

One last note. I should be able to use the dried natto I have coming as starter culture. I recall someone saying they did that on an Amazon review for natto. Once I dust off and sterilize all my equipment this should be something I can whip up with just a few minutes prep time, requiring not much more effort than making yogurt...

[surfsteve]

I just discovered that my small rice cooker bowl fits inside my yogurt maker perfectly. Though I can't make as big of a batch as with the large one this should greatly simplify the process because the rice cooker will automatically sterilize the  bowl while cooking the beans. All I should have to do is use a sterile spoon to stir in the starter from the cooled rice cooker and drop it into the yogurt maker and cover it with a brand new or freshly washed towel.

I think using a clean towel rather than a sterile one will be ok because the towel will not actually touch the beans. Same with the yogurt maker. Just a quick wash with hot soapy water. The bowl and spoon probably must be sterilized because they are in direct contact with the beans.  If I make a pot of herbal tea I can kill two birds with one stone to sterilize the spoon. I don't think the whole spoon needs to be sterilized. Only the part coming in contact with the starter and the beans. 
 
(Hint to newcomers: Be sure to let the beans cool to warm before adding the starter culture. Adding it to hot beans will kill your starter.) Traditional natto is made from soy beans though any kind of beans seems like they will work. I wonder what else can be used. A mixture of rice and beans might be good. You'd have to add the rice on the 2nd cooking of the beans if you are using a rice cooker.  I don't think meat or fish would work. Fermenting cooked meat can be deadly but might be ok seeing it would be sterilized along with the beans. Raw meat (which also could be potentially deadly) isn't sterilized so would probably result in a natto failure due to contamination.

If you got a digital rice cooker that can be turned down and maintained around 105 degrees F. you can probably simplify the process even more by cooking the beans, letting them cool, adding the starter and culturing them all in the same vessel.

https://strengthandsunshine.com/how-to-cook-beans-in-a-rice-cooker/
I do it similar to this link only I rinse the beans and add the full amount of water on the 2nd cooking...

[surfsteve]

I wish I could say this was the video that got me interested in trying natto; but I already bought natto and had it in my refrigerator. I just didn't try it till after I watched the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8rCvLzZp4


I looked on Amazon for an all in one cooker that would cook the beans and ferment the natto and found a returned one of these for under 50 dollars
https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Pot-Multi-Use-Programmable-Pressure/dp/B00FLYWNYQ/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=yogurt+rice+cooker&qid=1551244443&s=gateway&sr=8-2

I watched the video again before going to work and started making my very first batch of nato as soon as I got home even though all I have on hand is pinto beans. Then I went to bed and slept on the idea of buying an all-in-one "natto" cooker. I had intended to wait and see how my first batch of natto turned out before buying one; but this morning I decided that even if it's a total failure I should buy the cooker anyway; and keep on trying to make it till I learn how. One of the things that convinced me to go ahead and buy it was that it was all stainless steel.

My first batch of home made natto is in the yogurt maker and will be ready to put in the refrigerator just before I go to bed tonight.

I really love natto. It reminds me of chocolate or carob mixed with brie cheese; and the taste lingers on for hours after you eat it.

Instead of cattle grazing on grass. Natto is bacteria grazing on beans. Though in the analogy you don't just eat the cattle, You eat them bones and all plus the entire field that they are grazing on.

[surfsteve]

I just checked on my natto and it seems to be doing fine. It has another ten hours to go in the yogurt maker before I refrigerate it. This morning it didn't looks so good but it's starting to get really stringy. When I checked on it this morning it was looking very dry. When I reviewed how to make it I saw that I should be filling the yogurt maker base that the bean pan is sitting in with water. It wasn't till I did that that it started getting stringy.

One bad thing is it's stinking up the house with an ammonia smell. I was afraid to taste it because of the smell but I tried a spoonful and once I put it into fresh air it didn't smell at all so I guess the smell isn't going into the food. It's just a gas the microbes give off while making it. It did have a pinto bean taste but there was a definite natto flavor along with it. I ordered some soybeans to try. Got a feeling that using them will make it just as good as the stuff I buy from the store.

I'm also thinking that if I don't let the gas escape it will either cause the natto to fail or be forced into the flavor of the food. Summer is coming so I wont have to worry about the smell once I turn on my swamp cooler. I suppose I could just set the yogurt maker outside. It's not really that bad...

[surfsteve]

I had to take a client to the emergency room and I got back a few hours later than my natto was supposed to be done. I've already eaten half of it. It came out really wonderful. I don't think it matters what kind of beans you use. The texture is different with the pinto beans but the taste is exactly like the soybean natto I bought from the oriental market. I wonder if there are different strains of natto like there are different strains of yogurt. Mine actually came out a little stringier than the natto I bought at the market to use as starter. Maybe it's because I fermented it a little longer.

I was worried when it smelled up the kitchen earlier but every hint of stinkyiness was gone when I got home and not only did the kitchen not smell but there wasn't even a trace left in the natto it's self. OK maybe just a little but no more then brie cheese and It had that chocolaty brie taste just like the natto I used as starter. 

I started another batch already. I'm so glad I discovered natto and took the time to find out how to make it. The best part is it should totally clean out my arteries, melt all the fiber that was causing sore muscles and I will never have to take a vitamin K supplement ever again.

[Projectile Vomit]

Intriguing. It had never occurred to me to make my own natto. I have always bought it from the store, at exorbitant prices. Your posts on it here have inspired me. I will probably try making it with a locally-grown bean of some sort, and maybe try a batch with garbanzos.

[surfsteve]

Cool Eric!

I would also like to try it with garbanzos myself! One of the videos I posted used them in it and it turned out fine. I wonder if you could ferment beans and rice, or beans rice and fish? I probably wont be trying that last one. I soaked my 2nd batch overnight and got them started cooking this morning as I write this!. I can't wait till my all-in-one cooker gets here to see if it does just as good a job as my rice cooker and yogurt maker method. It's a huge 6 quart cooker so I will be able to make giant batches to share with everybody I know. Plus it's a pressure cooker too. I just hope it can function as a yogurt maker with a towel over the cover to vent the natto fumes! I don't see why not!

Speaking of venting. My 2nd batch is going to be bigger than my 1st. I noticed the lady at in the natto company video didn't stack the beans too thick while fermenting them. I hope my stacking them a little deeper than her still allows them to vent the natto fumes off of them properly. When I get my 6 quart machine I shouldn't have to worry about that. My current rice cooker is only 6 cups!

Oh yeah. I let my dogs lick the dish afterwards and even they seem to like natto!

It's hard to believe I am the first one to make natto on here. I would have figured with the high meat threads and all, that several of you guys would be experts at making it. I tried making yogurt again a year or so back and found it to be highly inflammatory and it gave me sinus problems. The natto doesn't seem to do that and seems to be a great substitute for cheese!

[surfsteve]

What do you guys think about fermenting beans rice and fish together? I'm a little worried that the meat could develop botulism but I don't think it would, since cooking it should kill all the bacteria. You'd just have to make sure not to get any cross contamination so that the meat is only inoculated with natto bacteria. If I ever try that it will be way on down the road and I will probably want to read about others doing it and having success with it before I try it myself. Seems a little to risky unless you are dying for natto-tized fish. I think I'd rather have mine cooked at 112 degrees F. or more on the side and the natto only cooks at 105 F.

[surfsteve]

I just googled natto fish and the word bonito came up. I've had bonito before, it is a dried fermented tuna and tastes very good but I didn't see anything anywhere about throwing fish in with soybeans to make natto.

Here's a wiki that came up when I googled bonito

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsuobushi

[Projectile Vomit]

I wonder if cooking the bean is necessary for the fermentation to work? I know that you can eat garbanzos raw if you soak and sprout them. I might try making natto from raw, soaked and sprouted garbanzos.

[surfsteve]

I'd be interested to find out how that works out for you. I don't think it will work though. What about inoculating some other food that can be eaten raw with the natto bacteria? No wait. That probably wont work either due to cross contamination. Raw foods already contain bacteria of other species. If you inoculated raw cucumbers that already contain their own bacteria you'd most likely just be making pickles.

Another example would be sour milk vs yogurt. If you don't boil the milk to kill off the competing bacteria you don't get yogurt it turns out more like curds and whey.

No. I don't think beans can be eaten raw because they make you sick and I don't think the natto bacteria would detoxify them to prevent that. But I could be wrong. Let us know how it goes and what you decide to try!

[surfsteve]

Oh my. I completely ignored the part about sprouting the beans. Yeah if you can eat them sprouted you can certainly eat them fermented but I got a feeling that they would turn out more like pickles due to cross contamination from the predominant bacteria already in the air. Would probably be good though!

[surfsteve]

You might try throwing a few sprouted garbanzo beans in with some other assorted vegetables and letting them ferment in a jar of water naturally. I've pickled all sorts of vegetables. Carrots, celery, onions and cauliflower all mixed together are my favorite. Sometimes I throw in a little sliced cucumber. I always add salt and spices. The salt makes them crisp I guess by favoring bacteria that like salt. If you don't use it your pickling will turn to mush.  Oh yeah. I used to throw in some cayenne pepper to spice it up but that's before I stopped doing the nightshade thingy.

[surfsteve]

I just ordered some bonita flakes I found on Amazon for under $20 a pound. I couldn't make them myself that cheap. Probably made from more than 5 pounds of fresh tuna.

Here's the link if anyone is interested:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013CFCJ5I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[surfsteve]

I'm ten minutes away from inoculating my 2nd batch of pinto beans I just cooked up. I boiled an ounce of water and a spoon full of honey in the microwave that is cooling down enough to add my natto starter. The honey will help it multiply faster. I think I forgot to mention it last time. I left the spoon in the honey water so it will be sterilized as well.

Once I take it out of the microwave I'm going to microwave a damp towel 3 minutes to sterilize it.  I feel the towel needs to be sterilized this time because I made such a big batch that it's going to come in direct contact with the bowl of beans I placed inside my yogurt maker which is full of water. This could contaminate my natto.

Hope this batch turns out as good as the first one did.

Oh yeah I also didn't drain all the water from the beans. Left an ounce or two. I am hoping this will make it stringier as there will be more liquid. In hind sight I suppose I should have just used more water with the honey.

Here I go!

[surfsteve]

Here's a video about making natto with the pot I just bought. Mine came in the mail today!

DIY Instant Pot Natto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JbWqRNCmxQ

She made that look too easy. I still have a ton of natto so I should probably wait before making anymore but I just can't wait to try it with my new gizmo. Wow she paid $100 for hers? The one I bought was half that. Other than a few smudges that looked like fingerprints it was brand new!

[surfsteve]

I just made natto for my first time using soy beans. It turned out super slimy and gooey! I used extra honey and water in the inoculation but even so, I think it was the soy beans that had something to do with it. I been making a batch every day or so while the previous one is soaking. I even got my dogs eating it! Now that I'm used to making it I can definitely say it's no harder to make than yogurt!

[surfsteve]

One thing I can say after eating natto is that I have been unintentionally cutting down on my meat consumption. I don't think there are any vegans here among us but if there are I would definitely say, eat natto if you want to be a healthy vegan. In addition to vitamin K there's definitely loads of B vitamins in this stuff because it makes my pee yellow just like I took a vitamin. After eating it a while I'd have to say it's more like a meat than it is like a vegetable.

If you just want to get used to natto I would recommend you start off eating the powder first because it's not slimy and then when you make it don't add a lot of water and little or no honey to start the culture. I wouldn't recommend decreasing the fermenting time though because the longer it ferments the more it vents off the stinkiness. Also it tastes better when it's aged in the refrigerator a few days.

[surfsteve]

I ate a huge bowl of the soybean natto I made yesterday and I can really feel the difference. I can still taste it this morning and I feel an almost high from it. It would be interesting to find out the vitamin content of natto made from different types of beans. The soybean natto is the mildest tasting and all the extra honey really fed the microbes and got them going quickly. About halfway through the fermentation process I stir the beans and added more water to them. The last batch was noticeably more fermented than any previous batches. To the point where it was half beans and half stringy ferment which is sort of like gravy. OK maybe not sort of but enough to remind me of it.

I'm adding a monster sized tablespoon of honey to my next batch and planning on fermenting it for 30 hours. I'm also out of store bought natto so I'm inoculating it with the natto I made from the previous batch. I wonder if it will reduce the quality the way it does when you do it with yogurt. It seemed with yogurt that after 3 or 4 generations the quality was noticeably worse.

[surfsteve]

I am eating my 2nd batch of soy natto that I cultured from the last batch. It is noticeably less stringier but seems to have a slightly stronger carob or bitter cocoa flavor. I'd have to say that the culture probably breaks down like yogurt does, probably due to contamination and that you should probably make it from store bought natto every time unless you know a trick to keeping the culture pure or are doing it under laboratory conditions, which I don't.

Yeah. I'm eating a batch of the first natto and it's definitely stringier but doesn't have coco like flavor. I think the 2nd generation batch definitely tastes better but isn't as stringy. This could be due to the extra honey I added to get the culture started. I might point out that there is no sweet taste at all. I suspect the sugar is completely broken down from the microbes.

I think this thread is winding down. If I can figure out for sure what gives it that cocoa like taste I will add to it. ( maybe more culturing time?) Also I will try and post what it tastes like when I make it from dried powdered natto. I noticed they sell spores specifically as starter that are very expensive. I wouldn't waste my money on them but if you do I'd be interested to hear how the natto turned out.

Take care,
and I hope someone enjoys this thread!

[surfsteve]

To conclude: I'm eating a 3rd bowl of natto this morning. (1st and 3rd bowl from batch 2 and 2nd bowl from batch 1.) I believe the more it's cultured, the stronger the cheesy cocoa taste it develops. Even after only 12 hours of culturing it's pretty stringy and doesn't get much stringier after 30 hours, I think it's pretty much the taste that changes. My first batch I only had a tiny bit of starter natto left but I used a huge tablespoon from that batch to make the 2nd one, that plus the honey plus the additional culture time made the taste a lot stronger.