David Chang’s Brooklyn Lab Is Making Condiments That Will Revolutionize American Cooking
At Momofuku Lab, miso and soy sauce get a serious makeover, becoming delicious hozon and bonji
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Miso, the fermented soybean paste, has been competing for World’s Greatest Condiment for centuries. And for the past six years, David Chang has quietly been rethinking it, producing small batches of miso-like pastes made from other legumes and seeds. He calls them hozon.
Chang became obsessed with the idea of making his own miso while traveling in Japan six years ago, where he found the highest-quality stuff—the stuff he was most interested in cooking with—was either extremely expensive or not exported at all.