Tomato-Free Ground Beef and Miso Pasta: Hayato Morita Draws the Moisture Out of Ground Meat and Builds the Sauce Through Emulsification

Ryuji has made several sponsored videos for this olive oil. Having done so, Ryuji wanted to see how it would taste in the hands of other people who cook well, and invited Morita. Last time, Morita made peperoncino, and Ryuji recalls the flavor leaving them "at a loss for words."

This time they use a different pasta from last time, a quick-cooking type that boils in 8 minutes. Morita said there was a recipe that suits this pasta, and asked to make the other dish with ground beef no matter what. It is a pasta of ground beef with a little miso added.

Morita describes the oil as follows. Its aroma seems restrained, but it actually comes through properly, and it brings out the strength of Japanese ingredients. It plays the role of an emcee, setting off the ingredients around it. That is why, this time, Morita kept to a simple lineup of strong ingredients.

The ingredients are ground beef from the supermarket, pasta, koji miso, Hi-Me, butter and garlic. Morita said ground beef is a difficult ingredient that is often used for hamburger steaks, but there is knowledge and technique you should know when turning it into pasta, and Morita wanted to pass that on. When Ryuji asked whether it would be fine to chop beef by hand if you have no ground beef, Morita said it would be fine, and added that the reason chopping it yourself is actually better would be explained shortly.

Before cooking, the conversation turned to the oil's container. According to Morita, olive oil is often sold in plastic bottles to show off its color. But this product's pack blocks light well, so there is little oxidation from ultraviolet rays. The standard limit for acidity is 0.8, but this product is 0.3 or below, so it can be used in a nearly unoxidized state, Morita explained.

Ryuji pointed out that the pack can be crushed small and thrown away once used up, and suggested that this is eco-friendly. Morita agreed, saying that households dislike throwing away heavy bottles, so being able to crush the pack is popular.

The cooking starts with prepping the meat. Morita's explanation goes like this. Ground meat is made by grinding large amounts of meat through a mincer all at once, which generates frictional heat. To remove that heat, every supermarket adds quite a lot of ice. They control the room temperature as well and add ice to keep the mincer from heating up, so ground meat is actually a carefully made product.

As a result, Morita says, about 20% of ground chicken, and over 10% of ground beef, is moisture from the ice. For the roughly 120g of ground beef used this time, about 10g is moisture that isn't beef, and Morita's position is that it isn't needed. Ryuji reacted by saying they hadn't known this.

The method Morita showed for removing the moisture uses sugar. Lay down about two sheets of paper towel, place the ground meat on them, and sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of sugar on one side. Flip it over and sprinkle the same amount on the other side, just enough to lightly cover the whole surface. According to Morita, the sugar doesn't go into the meat; it all comes out together with the water.

When the meat was wrapped in paper and weighed down, water came out right away. They used things like the corner of a container as a weight, and what to put on top got a laugh in the studio. The meat is left like this until just before finishing.

Looking at the meat after it had rested, Ryuji was surprised at how much moisture had come out and how it had become dry and meat-like. Morita pointed out that the sugar on the surface was almost gone. The sugar had turned into sugar water and moved over to the paper. Morita explained that this treatment alone draws out water equal to more than 10% of the meat's weight, and when it was squeezed by hand, still more water came out.

Morita said adding ice is a Japanese technique and not something to criticize, but as far as Morita is concerned, it isn't needed. Removing this water raises the aroma of the meat considerably, Morita says.

If you bring the pasta water to a boil in parallel, Morita says, the whole dish is done in about 10 minutes. For two servings, sauté garlic in 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Since the beef releases fat, 1 tablespoon of oil is enough.

Ryuji had thought that beef and olive oil alone might be too heavy. Morita answered that beef fat and this oil pair well, and that is enough on its own.

Ryuji raised the point that emulsification is often thought to be difficult at home. According to Morita, the key is butter and monosodium glutamate. Hi-Me dissolves quickly in water, so adding just a little greatly advances emulsification, and it will emulsify even with a small amount of liquid.

Ryuji broke it down for viewers. Water and oil don't normally mix, and the oil floats on top, but adding things like this, or lemon or butter, makes them blend into an emulsion, like a milky lotion. Using that moistening effect in cooking is fundamental to Italian and French cuisine. Ryuji often simmers in one pan and emulsifies with the starch released from the pasta, but this time they emulsify with butter and Hi-Me.

The pasta is boiled in 1L of water with salt at about 1.5%, 160g of it. The package says 8 minutes, and they cook it 1 minute shorter, for 7 minutes. Ryuji said this pasta is a personal favorite.

Add half a teaspoon of Hi-Me to the sautéed garlic, then add a little over 1 tablespoon of koji miso and the drained ground beef. From here, turn the heat to low and cook slowly at a low temperature. According to Morita, there are several ways to keep ground meat moist, and this time Morita chose slow cooking at a low temperature.

Ryuji noticed that while the mince was breaking apart, no moisture at all was coming out, which was different from usual. Morita explained that this mince coats itself in and absorbs the oil added earlier, and eventually releases its own fat. The small amount of sugar left over from the prep combines with the miso to become the pasta sauce. Since the pasta goes in afterward, there's no need to cook it too much at this stage.

When there is less than 1 minute left before the pasta is done, add 10g of butter. The heat stays quite low. The pasta is at 100°C, so the butter blends in completely the moment the pasta goes in, Morita says. What matters is not cooking off the butter's aroma and not releasing excess moisture.

Add the pasta, cooked for 7 minutes, along with 1 tablespoon of pasta water. Simply turning up the heat at the end and tossing completed the emulsification. Ryuji was surprised at how "simple" it was and said the aroma of the miso stood out. The two of them confirmed that it was fully emulsified. The finished ground meat had a beautiful color, with a little pink remaining.

Ryuji's first reaction was that the aroma was completely different. At about 60g per serving, there isn't much meat, yet the aroma and flavor of the meat are plenty strong, Ryuji said. When Morita urged Ryuji to try the mince, Ryuji acknowledged the difference in the mince and said it was very delicious. The sauce isn't watery; it's packed with flavor and aroma, Ryuji says.

Morita said the olive oil brings out the aroma of the meat. Ryuji also observed that the aroma of the olive oil stands out without getting in the way of the beef's flavor and aroma, as if the two were boosting each other synergistically. It feels like eating a steak, Ryuji said. Morita remarked that small things can raise home-cooking technique with ground meat.

Ryuji said the idea of making the sauce with olive oil alone is uncommon, and Morita responded that there's probably almost nothing like it even on YouTube. Ground meat pasta usually uses tomatoes and adds all sorts of things. Ryuji took it to mean that if the beef itself becomes delicious through this prep, perhaps tomatoes were never needed.

Morita's explanation is that a chef's way of thinking is subtraction. Normally, if you take away the tomatoes, the meat doesn't stand out. That's because the glutamic acid in tomatoes acts as the bridge between the meat and the pasta. Remove what sits between them, and the dish falls apart. But if you prep the ground meat and learn to emulsify, it holds together, Morita says. Ryuji agreed.

Finally, Ryuji said that although they use many different olive oils, it's true that this oil makes the beef stand out. When a staff member said it was the most delicious pasta they had eaten recently, Ryuji replied half-jokingly, "I've got to go train too." Ryuji presented the dish as a tomato-free miso and ground beef meat sauce, and closed by saying it showed the possibilities of pasta and olive oil.