Miso Soup

I’ve started making homemade miso soup and I am so incredibly hooked, I don’t even know how to tell you.

Hopefully you all know what miso soup tastes like. It’s a rich brothy Japanese soup. Brown liquid, usually green onions and tofu and sometimes mushrooms. Almost always served as an appetizer at various restaurants.

I’ve always loved it. When I was an exchange student in Japan, it was one of my favorite dishes (though my host mother was perplexed as to why I preferred that to fancier dishes).

I have finally taken the plunge and started making my own miso soup at home. With preparation for my optional ingredients, a bowl takes me about ten minutes (maybe less) to prepare.

Recipe (for one serving)

1 cup water
1/2 tsp Dashi Stock (this is a granulated fish stock base)
1 tsp Red Miso paste (not yellow!)

That’s it. That’s the base recipe. Everything else is optional (though I recommend it, since it’s YUMMY). You’ll want to heat that in a pan over the stove until it starts steaming, but try to avoid boiling it. Miso is a fermented food and part of the good gut-bacteria benefits would be lost if overheated. (At least, that’s what I’m told. What I HEAR is that it doesn’t take very long to cook. BAM)

Optional ingredients (in order of recommendation)

Please note that I recommend chopping/sauteeing all of these ahead of time, then just adding a spoonful or so as the water’s heating.

Chopped green onion (the stuff you’d see on a baked potato, for reference). These can be sauteed ahead of time or just sprinkled on fresh.
Chopped firm or extra-firm tofu. I recommend leaving this in a water bath in your fridge after chopping.
Mushrooms. I like mine pre-sauteed, but I’m not a big fan of raw shrooms.
Chopped sauteed onion. I actually don’t notice the onion pieces in the soup, but it adds a real depth of flavor akin to a french onion soup and I really love what this brings.

The ingredients I linked above are gluten-free. This soup is a GREAT low-calorie dinner on days when you’re munchy but not really hungry-hungry.

I’ve made it almost every day since ordering the ingredients.

Also? The amount of Dashi they sent will tide me over for a year, I think. I’ll need to get another miso paste in about a month or two, but it’ll be a long long long long time before I need more dashi.

You?

Anyone else make or love Miso soup?