Nattō | Review

Why is Japanese fermented soybeans dish, Nattō super popular in Japan and are they even good?

Since my goal is to have a healthier eating lifestyle, I figure I gave Nattō a try. After all, it has to be tasty for Japanese people to enjoy it for breakfast right?

Author’s Note: This review is NOT sponsored. All products used for this review is paid by me. :)

What is Nattō ? (References 1, 2)

First, before getting into how to eat this dish and how it tastes, let learn what natto is. Nattō is fermented soybeans. The dish is fermented with Nattō bacteria, which explains the name. No one really know the origin of Nattō. Some believe that Nattō was invented around the 1080s AD, when Minamoto no Yoshiie picked up the boiling soybeans spilled on the ground during an attack. He forgot about the soybeans until a couple days later and realized how tasty the fermented boiled soybeans tasted.

The process of making Nattō is quite complex. The soybeans are washed, soaked for 12–20 hours, steamed, and fermented with Nattō bacteria, also known as Bacillus subtilis for 24 hours before undergoing the cooling process. During the cooling process the fermented soybeans are aged in the refrigerator for up to 1 week to develop the dish signature stinky smell and gooey texture.

Nattō is a dish that you either hate or love. This dish has a very strong fermented smell and a very slimy gooey texture. Okay, so far Nattō doesn’t really sounds like an enjoyable dish, so why is it so popular? Well, there are many health benefits to it. Nattō contains a lot of vitamin k and protein and is very low in calorie compare to cooked soybeans. On top of that, Nattō is also a great source of iron, calcium, magnesium, protein, potassium, etc…

Method

Time to eat!

Before eating this dish, I did some Google searching on how people eat Nattō. I learned that this dish requires a lot of mixing to get a super gooey texture. Some add in green onion and eat it with rice.

Results

First impression

I found this Nattō in the freezer section at the Japanese store. There are so many brands to choose from and all labels are written in Japanese (sigh…). That definitely helped me a lot on how to choose one. I ended up going with the one that has green onion in the picture. I left it on the counter to defrost for 30 minutes and cooked some oatmeal rice in the meantime.

The package was made of styrofoam. When I first opened the package the lid was a bit sticky and there were two sauce bags. One was clear brown liquid while the other was a thick yellow sauce. I tasted them and confirmed that the brown liquid is dashi stock and the thick yellow one is Japanese mustard.

The smell was very pungent. The soybeans are super sticky and gooey. At first glance, this dish was very unappetizing.

Mixing with chopstick

I mixed the Nattō until the gooey part became pale white. The more I mixed the paler it got. The stinky smell also died down as I mixed. The gooey part was very sticky. It stretched like the cheese on a cheesy pizza.

The taste is pretty refreshing, less pungent than before mixing. The soybeans had no flavor, very plain. The overall dish has no seasoning at all. It tasted all super plain.

Adding in dashi

The dashi stock was salty and sweet, similar to Japanese soup base. Adding dashi to the already mixed Nattō added some nice flavor to the overall dish. Nattō tasted pretty light with a hint of salty and sweet. It was super refreshing.

Adding in mustard

The yellow sauce was a spicy mustard. Japanese mustard tasted very different than American mustard. The mustard was spicier and had a light vinegary flavor.

The mustard was too strong, so I added very little. Couple drops were enough to have mustarding taste in the back of the tongue. The mustard added a nice kick to the dish without changing the overall flavor that much.

Eating it with rice and green onion

First, I tried eating the Nattō with just rice and was shocked of how mild the flavor is. The dish itself is super delicious, not too salty, but refreshing. It tasted very light, which explained why Japanese people love to have Nattō for breakfast.

Adding a green onion was a must. The green onion added a nice crunch and helped cut out the slimy texture of Nattō. The soybeans have a nice buttery and nutty taste.

Conclusion

Overall, the dish itself was not as bad as it smelled or looked. I really enjoyed eating Nattō with rice and green onion. The only problem I had was how sticky and slimy the dish was. Once I got passed that stage, the dish was very delicious.

I wouldn’t recommend eating this dish without the dashi sauce. That sauce was the key to all the flavor. Otherwise, the overall dish was like eating cooked unsalted beans.

Extra

After eating Nattō, I started to do some food experiment as well. I added furikake to the dish. Furikake are Japanese seasoning mixture made of seaweed, bonito flakes, dried shrimp, dried eggs, etc… There came in a varieties of flavor. Japanese people eat this with plain white rice as a dish. Overall, don’t add this to the Nattō and rice. It tasted horrible. :(