Mouthwatering Miso Black Garlic Sauce (Easy & Versatile!) (2024)

Ever since watching that Bob’s Burger episode years ago where Bob makes a Black Garlic Burger, I’ve been obsessed with this fermented garlic. It’s not always easy to find, but this week while shopping at our community market, low and behold, they had a big stack of black garlic in stock!!!

I bought 1… and then immediately came back later that afternoon to buy 5 more packets because that window to buy it was clearly limited. With an influx of black garlic and a craving for umami, I decided to make the best miso black garlic sauce out there. I now use this sauce all the time on Asian recipes (on rice, for fish glazes, a wing sauce, mushrooms and veggies, even eggs).

What Does Black Garlic Miso Sauce Taste Like?

This sauce is sweet, tangy, umami, and salty. The sesame oil ties all the flavors together for a sauce that just works, on everything. It’s better than a soy sauce since it has a more robust flavor profile, and is sweeter thanks to the black garlic.

What Is In Miso Sauce?

Miso paste is a creamy fermented paste made from soybeans, rice, vinegar and kōji. Basically, if soy sauce was a paste, it’s Miso. As you know, soy sauce is very watery, but miso is thick and packs a ton of flavor.

What Is Black Garlic?

Black garlic is just fermented garlic. It’s aged by heating up garlic bulbs in stable heat conditions for at least 3 months. The result is a fermented garlic bulb that’s super sweet (and black!)

You can make black garlic at home if you have the space and patience. We currently practice urban homesteading in our apartment and sadly don’t have the space to set up a black garlic station, but one day I plan on growing our own garlic and turning some of that harvest into our own black garlic. That way we don’t have to stock up on it like it’s like toilet paper in March 2020 whenever we see it in store!

Dishes To Make With Miso Black Garlic Sauce

You can use this whenever you have miso sauce recipes that call for miso and you want an extra kick of sweetness! Personally, I love to use this miso black garlic sauce as a fish glaze, especially cod or salmon. But I also recently used it as wing sauce.

And honestly, sometimes when I’m craving a quick snack I’ll cut off a square of tofu and drizzle some of this black garlic miso sauce over it. NOM!

It’s super flexible, so feel free to get creative, I bet it’ll taste good! But, here are some starter ideas:

• For Nasu dengaku
• Miso Eggplant Nobu (another miso grilled aubergine aka eggplant)
• Black garlic salmon glaze
• Black garlic miso ramen dish
• As a miso dipping sauce for tako
• Over rice, tofu veggies and meats (we love making bowls!)
• Over cured salmon
• In eggs
• Drizzled over cold tofu for a snack

Cooking Black Garlic Miso Sauce

This simple miso sauce recipe comes together quickly and without any heat. Usually, it takes me under 10 minutes to blend and have ready. I always prep a large batch and put it in a bottle so I can easily use it for upcoming recipes, but you can just as easily make it fresh for the meal you’re cooking.

First, peel and grate your fresh ginger as finely as you can manage with your grater. If you LOVE ginger, this is your chance to grate a little more than the recipe calls for so you can have a more ginger-forward sauce.

Next step is to blend everything together. You can use a large smoother blender, but I prefer to use an immersion blender as it’ll conserve the ingredients better and help make it more smooth and sauce-like. You don’t need a fancy blender, we use this blender set that comes with a couple different containers and is under $60.

Then, blend all the ingredients, ginger included, with your immersion blender. The key is blending until the sauce is smooth. This usually takes under 10 minutes.

Does it matter what sake you use? As you probably know, sake is Japanese alcohol, similar to wine but different. And, just like wine, the flavor notes of sake does very. If you have a favorite sake brand, feel free to use it but I find it doesn’t matter too much when cooking this sauce as long as it’s not a sake that has wild flavor notes. I usually opt for the $4 Sake for my Asian cooking wine stock.

Once it’s all blended, transfer the sauce to your storage container. We use either mason jars or chef squeeze bottles like these to store sauces in our fridge. The sauce can last up to 3-4 weeks, but it never lasts that long in our house.

If you make this sauce, I’d love to hear how you like it! Drop a comment below or DM us on Instagram @soulhomesteading. And, if you loved this sauce please Pin and share this post so more home chefs can find it, too!