Kinema

chembihik · hokuma

The Kirat answer to the question of how to keep a bean.

What it is

Kinema is soybeans soaked, boiled soft, pounded to split them, then packed into a bamboo basket lined with fern or banana leaf and left somewhere warm for a day or two. Wild Bacillus subtilis does the work, and the beans come out bound in a sticky, stringy film that carries a strong ammoniac smell and a glutamate-heavy, almost meaty savour. It is usually sun-dried after that and stored.

Where it comes from

The eastern hills of Nepal, where it belongs to the Kirat communities, mainly the Limbu and the Rai. The name comes from the Limbu kinambaa, from ki, fermentation, and nambaa, flavour. One account places its origin in eastern Nepal somewhere between 600 BC and 100 AD, which would make it older than almost anything else in this pantry.

What it's called

Kinema (Limbu and Nepali) · chembihik · hokuma, in other Kirat languages. It sits in the same family as Japanese natto and Thai thua nao, all of them Bacillus ferments of the soybean.

In the kitchen

Soak the dried beans for fifteen minutes and drain them well. Then fry them in hot oil for a full minute before any spice or tomato joins the pan, because that short contact with fat turns the raw ferment smell into something toasted and round. From there it cooks down with tomato into a thick chutney, or gets pounded dry with garlic and chilli into an achar.

What we know about the claims

Fermented soy is genuinely nutritious, high in protein and B vitamins, and the Bacillus process makes the beans easier to digest than boiled soy. The smell puts most newcomers off and no amount of nutrition talk fixes that, so start with a small quantity cooked into tomato, not a spoonful eaten plain.

Choosing and buying

A specialist order in Britain from the Nepali online grocers, and stock varies, so check before planning around it. Japanese natto from a Japanese or Korean grocer is the closest available substitute and needs no soaking, though it is milder and stickier. In the US, a Himalayan grocer online, or natto from H Mart.