Salt Koji

When I make Miso, I make small amount of salt-koji with left over rice koji.

Rice koji is the rice with inoculated koji mold which converts starch in rice into sugar. This sugar eventually encourages fermentation for production of Miso or Sake.

To make salt-koji, I simply mix rice koji with warm salt water (hot water would kill koji). I never measured and tend to have lower salt, but haven't encountered disaster, at least, not yet.
Leave it under room temperature and mix once a day for a week.
It's ready when it starts to show a little sliminess, and you can keep this in a fridge for a while.
Salt-koji can be used to marinate fish or meat, or for pickled vegetable.

I had carrot which was fresh from farmers market, so I cut them into bite-size sticks and marinated with salt koji over night.
The salt-koji I made was a little low in salt, and the pickled carrot had more sweetness of its own than saltiness.

I liked it but wanted to make more pickles-like pickles, so got cucumber, cut them and sprinkled salt on them, squeezed out water, then marinated them with salt koji over night.
This one tasted more like pickled vegetable (and easy to make)!