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Natto!!!

Fantt said:
Anyone had chitterlings? Yummy pig intestines. (...) They are the most disgusting smelling things on the face of the planet, but they test pretty good.
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How can you eat something and it tastes "pretty good" when it smells disgusting???

I know I could not eat anything which smells disgusting.... In my view, if it smells bad, it tastes bad.... (a good basic rule for me, I think, although I don't smell the food before I eat)
 
Fantt said:
Anyone had chitterlings? Yummy pig intestines. Fried or boiled. They are the most disgusting smelling things on the face of the planet, but they test pretty good. They were kind of a poor man's food in the US south.
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Well, I'm African-American and have had chitterlings (or, as we black folk call the stuff, "chitlins" as it's eaten up in the north as well) and folks, that stuff makes natto smell like Chanel No. 5! Fried or boiled, it's all the same----DISGUSTING! It goes down like thick slime and hangs around in your stomach like an unwelcome relative who overstays his visit! Tastes good? I beg to differ! I'd rather starve than eat that stuff!
 

HAHA So chitterlings make natto smell like Chanel No. 5...?? HAHA...I didn't think it was possible for natto to be more tasty than...anything eatable.

I think I'd say pass to natto, chitterlings AND HAGGIS!!
 
People in Taiwan were always claiming the same thing about chou doufu. I don't think it smells worse than natto, but the smell spreads out over entire city blocks, so it's more deadly than natto. Durian also gets the same claim--smells bad, tastes good--but I found I couldn't deal with the aftertaste. My husband likes it, but then he likes certain kinds of natto too, so go figure. I never tried chou doufu while I was in Taiwan, but if I go back and bring him, I'll make him try it, and have a nibble myself.

He says only homemade/"fresh" natto is good, and that the prepackaged stuff is nasty. Suuure.
 
We use beef tripe to make Menudo- same as chitlins. It smells baaaad(when cooking) but tastes good. I don't know how or why. I just accept it.
 
The only time I ever saw natto was when it was the battle ingredient during an episode of "Iron Chef". I watched that show a lot and my first thought was: 'They're actually gonna cook with that stuff?' It looked like lima beans coated in snail slime! I couldn't imagine what that junk smelled or tasted like! UGH! But chitlins is, in my humble opinion, far worse!!!
 
Not that I am fond of either, but if my life depended upon eating either an ounce of natto or a pound of chitlins, I would smile with every bite of chitlins, knowing that I didn't have to eat even at tiny bit of natto.

My wife of 30 years absolutely loves natto, but fortunately she honors my distaste for the sight and smell of the sticky mass of fermented beans by giving me fair warning prior to eating it so that I will know to leave the premises.

Early in our relationship, I gave natto a fair shot. Having the reputation for being one who would eat damn near anything, and also not wanting to offend my girlfriend, I tried it when she offered it to me. Watching her stir it up with shoyu and mustard, her face beaming with joy, I mimicked her actions by preparing my own little plate of natto. My feeling of trepidation grew as I pulled a clump from the mass with my chopsticks, and almost gagged at the sight of the strings of goo that resembled a bloodhound's drool. The intensly foul odor was a warning to my brain, but love does often drive one to foolheartiness, and I ignored the voice in my head that was screaming "DON'T DO IT!!!" and proceeded to put the clump of stinky, sticky beans into my mouth.

Forcing myself to swallow, I was almost certain that if I had not lost the ability to speak, that I soon would. "You really love this stuff, don't you?" I asked her, managing to speak a few words before the paralysis took hold.

She smiled sweetly, and nodded her head in the affirmative. "Good," I replied, "you can eat my portion too." She giggled as I slid the little plate of natto accross the table, and I then proceeded to down a large bottle of Kirin to kill the taste, trying not to show an inordinate amount of displeasure over the proximity of the natto and the foul taste that it had left in my mouth while she was still eating.

Perhaps it was a test. I will probably never know. If it was, then I guess I passed, but I have never eaten natto since.

--Bob
 
Bob, my man, judging from everything I've read here about natto, I commend you greatly for making the then ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love! You have my respect! Did you need to have your stomach pumped afterward? Inquiring minds wanna know!
 
flashjeff said:
Did you need to have your stomach pumped afterward? Inquiring minds wanna know!
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Jeff,
Fortunately, no, I did not require medical attention afterward. Perhaps the beer that I drank killed the gremlins in the natto, or maybe this is just further anecdotal support for the premise that 'love conquers all'.
 
ffrost_nova622 said:
whats haggi and natto
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I have noticed that you post a lot and that you ask questions which can be found by reading the other posts in the thread....In fact your question can be answered if you READ through the posts!

E.g. what is haggis?
-what is futon (in the futon-thread.....if you read the other posts you wouldn't have to ask).
 
Bob in Iowa said:
Jeff,
Fortunately, no, I did not require medical attention afterward. Perhaps the beer that I drank killed the gremlins in the natto, or maybe this is just further anecdotal support for the premise that 'love conquers all'.
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Then you have both a strong spirit AND an even stronger stomach!!
 
I don't like the looks of the stuff. But maybe I should give it a chance as it seems to be good if you want to loose some weight. This is from todays Mainichi:

TV program introducing natto as diet food sparks buying frenzy
A television program claiming that natto, a strong-smelling food made from fermented soybeans, could help people lose weight has sparked a buying frenzy across the country, causing some manufacturers to run out of the product.

Manufacturers are trying to boost their supplies, but shortages reportedly remain widespread, and some manufacturers have even taken out newspaper ads apologizing for the shortages.

Sales of natto surged following a program aired on Fuji TV on Jan. 7. The program introduced a man and woman who had lost weight after eating natto for two weeks. The isoflavone contained in the beans was said to increase a specific type of hormone in the body, proving beneficial for people on diets.

After the broadcast, sales of natto rocketed, especially among young women. Takano Foods, a company based in Omitama, Ibaraki Prefecture, and Mizkan, located in Handa, Aichi Prefecture, subsequently took out newspaper ads apologizing for their lack of stock.

An official at one food manufacturer didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

"I want to describe this as trouble that we're actually happy about, but we're causing trouble for consumers and can't stay happy," the official said. (Mainichi)
 
I first had it in Japan almost 15 years ago and for some reason, I liked it immediately. Then coming back to the U.S., I had it again and liked it even more. I had it little by little and on my last few visits to Japan absolutely loved it. I had eaten it for breakfast a few times at someone's house and it just seemed to go well in the morning. Anytime really.

Nowadays, when I go to Japanese restaurants, I usually get it either with tuna and mountain potato, rice and nori, or just in a maki roll. Sometimes I make it at home and eat it over rice. :gohan:
 
I tried natto before I went to Japan twice. Vile sickening stuff... After a year in Japan I came back and I thought I'd try it again since my tastes had changed. Nope, still vile and sickening. Sorry I just can't eat it.

My rule is this: "Any Japanese food that both smells AND looks like the leftovers from a very messed up and twisted Japanese porno, I will NOT eat."
 
By an experiment in Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries National Food Research Institute,
An amino acid and a sweetness ingredient of natto,
They increase so that there is much number of times to stir.
An amino acid
Amino acids increase by 50% when they mix natto 100 a time
Amino acids increase by 150% when they mix natto 300 a time
There is no change in more than 300 times
A sweetness ingredient
130% sweetness ingredients increase when they mix natto 100 a time.
230% sweetness ingredients increase when they mix natto 200 a time.
330% sweetness ingredients increase when they mix natto 400 a time.
Please do attention.
Please do not put sauce of natto before mixing it.
These effects are hard to become give.
http://www.nfri.affrc.go.jp/english/ourroles/index.html
 
Hiroyuki Nagashima, great information. My wife's father has always told me to mix 300 times but I can never be bothered. I knew that it's no longer sticky and sweeter but I didn't know about the amino acids.

So if the sauce goes in before the mixing, it's not the same?
 
There was a small write-up spot in today's The Daily Yomiuri about how so many supermarkets were running low on ....you guessed, it....NATTO !!!

Why?! Because there had been a documentary of sorts on some (or 'a'?) study which tends to show that eating those soured beans is one sure-fire way to lose weight !! So, naturally, all those folks--mostly the cute and or otherwise young girls who are so concerned about losing the weight that they don't already have--raided the stores of the stuff.

So, there you have it people...we can lose weight by eating natto !! So if any of you dear, kind JREFers are interested in losing weight here is the recipe:

Rush to the local super (if you're in Japan) or 'oriental food market' and fight off all the cute young girls trying to fight each other off to get that last box/carton of those non-odorless, well-stuck-together-by-long-unbreakable threads of whatever that is, and take it home. Place it in the fridge after having taken out all other edible items...ok, you can keep 99% cacao bits as a chaser since they are high in polyphenol...and wait.

Every morning after waking up, your head still lingering to those last most peaceful, romantic, and or blissfull dreams of REM sleep, go and open the fridge. Take out the carton of natto, and look at it in a deep, meditative focus. Breath deeply...as though you have just come up for air after having diven from the stern of the Titanic as it had risen 35 meters up into the air. After gaining consciousness again, put the carton of natto back into the fridge. Repeat this process at lunch and dinner.

Please do not carry your carton of natto to work in your lunch box, because second-hand aroma can be dangerous to those who are at work with heavy equipment.

After you have lost enough weight to give the impression that you are on a starvation diet, serve them on Ritz Crackers as a canape at your next Vodka tasting party, and, in the meantime, race down to your local McDonald's to retake your aborted 'self-factor'.

Now, don't just sit there....get going !!! and in the words of a great Japanese poet...(with a heavy Japanese accent) Do not take natto for what it can not be--natto!! Happy dieting !!
 

I'm not sure how it works with amino acid, but from my own experience, putting sauce before mixing kind of "kills" the... er, what should I call it, which we describe "nebaneba"?
If you mix natto well without sauce, it becomes quite fluffy, as it takes in a lot of air. But you cannot expect the same effect if you put sauce first.

So, if the amino acid comes from it (sticky, slimy part of natto), maybe putting sauce before mixing may affect the result...
 
Yes, I agree with undrentide that you need to mix it until stickiness increases to the max. Natto becomes a fluffier blob and tastes better than when you don't, which in this case the natto is just slimy beans...

I also recommend adding the mustard when mixing it!!

The recent craze about natto is true! I shop late in the evening and can't find natto at supermarkets!!

If you want the most out of natto, buy the "hikiwari" (chopped natto) type. It increases intake of the amino acids and other nutrients in the natto. Because of the stickiness of the beans, people are inclined to gobble it up with rice, without chewing it properly. "Hikiwari" type aids digestion of the food.
 
epigene said:
The recent craze about natto is true! I shop late in the evening and can't find natto at supermarkets!!
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Me too. I couldn't work out why the nato shelves were empty. Thanks to Mars Man I now know why.

Mars Man said:
Because there had been a documentary of sorts on some (or 'a'?) study which tends to show that eating those soured beans is one sure-fire way to lose weight !!
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I wonder how the TV viewers were persuaded that eating more natto would make them slimmer.

epigene said:
I also recommend adding the mustard when mixing it!!
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Ok. I'll try it later and see if I can tell the difference.


I usually use the same technique as I use for instant noodles - throw all the ingredients in at the same time! (No matter what it actually says on the packet) So I put the mustard and the sauce on the natto - but usually more over my fingers - and give it a short burst of twisting with the chopsticks, leaving trails of goo following the chopsticks when I move them away. So I think my natto qualifies for...
epigene said:
just slimy beans...
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So as I understand it now if the sauce is in first - it's less fluffy and more slimy/ sticky/ gooey. But I still have to go through the labour intensive mixing which is OK for one but I always have to do the children's as well.
 
craftsman said:
But I still have to go through the labour intensive mixing which is OK for one but I always have to do the children's as well.
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Do you mix in the individual packs?

Large families usually dump natto from their packs into a large bowl and mix all at once. That's what I did when the kids were small, and natto tastes better when mixed in larger quantity. *yum*
 
craftsman said:
I wonder how the TV viewers were persuaded that eating more natto would make them slimmer.
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Well, craftsman san, I didn't see it, so I don't exactly know, but I do know, from experience, that one TV show which I have seen from time to time on Sunday evenings, which deals with health matters, has caused some shopping frenzies in the past--such as for yogart and some other substances which I can't exactly remember now.

The Japanese public at large like this 'ﾂ身窶堙俄?堙や?堋ｯ窶堙ｩ' (mi ni tsukeru) type of program where information is presented in the form of a kind of quiz show. It seems that from such programs (even on radio) many people tend to take action for a while... Of course it's more often short lived than not....a kind of boom; and then its gone.
 
Who ate all my natto?



TV program introducing natto as diet food sparks buying frenzy

Mars man introduced the story a few posts back but I hadn't found it until now. So now I know that it was the TV program ﾂ"Aru-Aruﾂ" on FujiTV that wiped out my beloved natto supplies in acoop supermarket.

Why? Because...

The isoflavone contained in the beans was said to increase a specific type of hormone in the body, proving beneficial for people on diets.
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What a pile of .....! I wonder who was behind the research - not a natto manufacturer by chance?

Give me back my natto!
 
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