You will need a lidded container that breathes. A garlic keeper, butter keeper, or lidded soup bowl would work well. I used a six-inch wide “hot pot” cooking pot from Daisojapan.

Break up the garlic heads into cloves. Peel cloves. To loosen the papery peel, gently tap cloves with flat side of chef’s knife, keeping blade away from you. Don’t pulverize the cloves.

Scoop miso into designated container. Add cloves, ensuring each is completely covered. Smooth top with large spoon or spatula. Cover with lid.

Place on countertop–yes, your countertop–for at least a month. If room temperature freaks you out, or your kitchen doubles as a sauna, you can refrigerate the pickle. Hachisu left hers on the counter for a year, and wrote it was “sublime.”

After a month, or more, if you can wait, wipe the miso off, place cloves on a plate, and eat.

About leftover miso: Hachisu says it’s too garlicky for miso soup. I must be strange, but I love it in miso soup. Even better, though, is to re-use it to pickle more garlic cloves, which I’ve done with great success.

Notes:

Cold Mountain, Gold Mine Natural Foods, Eden Foods, and Mitoku Company, Ltd, are all reliable suppliers of quality miso.

If you want to speed the pickling process, Hachisu suggests parboiling the unpeeled garlic cloves for five minutes, which cuts the pickling time to a week. I haven’t tried this.