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JAPANESE TRADITION TO YOUR TABLE

Aedan brings Japanese fermented foods that are essential to flavor and health of every traditional Japanese meal to your table. We hand craft these foods in small batch, bringing you the foundation you need to craft fresh, healthful meals for you and your family.

Our cornerstone product is hand-crafted fresh koji (Aspergillus oryzae) Koji is a natural, enzyme rich ingredient that is the starter to make miso, soy sauce, sake, shochu, mirin and vinegar. Using Aeden’s fresh handmade Koji and Koji projects you can craft numerous nourishing meals loaded with Umami.

Our goal is help you create harmony in your family, body, taste and environment by sharing these Japanese traditional products to an American market. We hope to do this in the following way.
Harmony for the family table
Provide ingredients that are low maintenance, easy way to infuse flavor and healthy into every dish you feed your family.

Harmony for your body
Build strong immune system and prevent food allergies by helping the digestive system with probiotics in fermented foods. Using Koji also lowers your salt intake, as you can use 50% less salt to get the same flavor.

Harmony for Taste
Koji is a super effective natural marinade for tenderizing and enhancing meats, and the secret ingredient to bring out the Umami taste in meats and fish.

Harmony for environment
The fermented nature of the products provide easy food preservation without refridgeration! The natural ingredients and simple production process of Koji is gentle to the environment.

MADE FROM THE VERY BEST

Our products use the finest natural, non GMO and certified organic ingredients available and are small batch crafted by hand. Koji is steamed rice that has been germinated with koji-kin. Koji-Kin (Aspergillus Oryzae), creates several enzymes as it propagates the rice kernel. The results are probiotic, unpasteurized, rich in enzymes, with no preservatives and no artificial anything.

At Aedan we create small batches of Koji by hand, using the highest quality, organic rice from Koda farms. An artful combination of water, heat and environmental aspects creates rice grains with a light frosting and a sweet nutty scent.

To make our artisanal miso, we then mix the fresh koji with an various beans and grains and referment to provide you a range of choices - from traditional to exotic.

We offer both Koji and Miso that may be used in your home cooking and highly recommend you also try making your own miso. (We can teach you how!)

UNLEASH THE UMAMI

The beauty of fermentation is you get more layers of flavor, increased nutrition, and increased preservation – all in one act,
When koji is used in food preparation, the enzyme proteases breaks down proteins to produce amino acids including glutamate. This amino acid is responsible for umami, a rich, savory flavor that makes food taste delicious. The taste of umami combined with other tastes rounds out the flavor of any dish. Amylase, which is another koji’s enzyme, breaks down starches to produce simple sugars such as glucose thus adding a salty sweet flavor to meats and other proteins.
The Japanese have traditionally made full use of this technique of harnessing microorganisms to produce and preserve diverse foods under the extreme conditions of Japan’s 4 seasons. At the foundation of this culture there is koji in various forms, including rice koji, barley koji, and bean koji. Some sample ways you may get umami from Koji and miso in your dishes is as follows:

Marinate chicken with koji to create a sweet savory roast chicken
Top the miso on a riceball or as a vegetable dip for some humble nutty flavor.

Add to miso to salad dressings to add an earthy depth to your salads.
Mix miso with olive oil and crushed garlic as a marinade to your meats.

UNLOCK THE HEALTHY POTENTIAL

The benefits of using Aedan’s fermented products is that you can enjoy real Japanese healthy foods easily. It eliminates gluten, enhances the flavor of ingredients, adds amino acids, isoflavones, essential enzymes and increases foods nutritional value without any processing or additives. It’s ability to break down enzymes leads to better flavor, easier digestion and less sodium in your meals. Fermented products also helps strengthen your immune system and the breakdown of enzymes allows for easy digestion. As our products are made using the finest natural, non-GMO and certified organic ingredients, we hope to bring wholesome ingredients that help you make nutritious meals for the family.

After the 2011 earthquake in Japan, Shio-koji gained popularity for its traditional history of improving immune systems. Our other fermented products have also been noted for their health benefits and have been part of the traditional Japanese diet for thousands of years. We hope you may use these products in your meals to help harness the power of fermented foods.

UNLOCK THE HEALTHY POTENTIAL

The name Aedan ‘叡伝’ comes from two Kanji characters, ‘叡’ means wisdom, ‘伝’means hand down (as information) from generation to generation. Our founder, Mariko, creates small batch fermented products using the knowledge passed down from her Grandfather’s miso making business and mother’s home miso recipes in Japan. Using this traditional knowledge, she has adjusted and perfected her recipes to match the unique flora and environment of San Francisco.

In 2011 after the devastating Tsunami struck Japan, our founder, Mariko sold her natural fermented products to friends to fundraise for Japanese victims. The popularity of Mariko’s delicious fermented foods spread quickly by word-of-mouth in Japanese mother’s and friends community. After this fundraising, Mariko started to write Aedan’s weekly newsletters to share fermented foods and her wisdom on leading a happy healthy life. In May 2012, Mariko joined the incubator kitchen program at La Cocina in San Francisco and since then has worked to develop her Aedan fermented food product line.

LA COCINA

In May 2012, Mariko joined the incubator kitchen program at La Cocina in San Francisco and since then has worked to develop her Aedan fermented food product line. La Cocina is a ground-breaking business incubator designed to reduce the obstacles that often prevent entrepreneurs from creating successful and sustainable small businesses. By providing shared resources and an array of industry-specific services, business incubators ensure small businesses can succeed. La Cocina follows this model by providing commercial kitchen space and technical assistance focusing on low-income women and immigrant entrepreneurs who are launching, growing and formalizing food businesses.