Miso Soup

Miso soup made with Kagoshima white miso

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1½ t dashi powder (bonito dashi is used traditionally, but konbu dashi works as well)

4 C water

¼ C miso*

Your choice of ingredients (see below).

Place water and dashi powder in a pan and bring it to a boil. Add vegetables and cook until tender. Dissolve the miso in the broth.

Serve.

*Pretty much any miso that you find at the supermarket will be fine. There are many varieties, and some are more robust than others, so adjust the amount of miso according to taste.

Some miso comes with dashi already added. If this is the type that you buy, then obviously you won’t need to add any dashi.

Some combinations to add to basic miso soup:

Tofu chopped in ½-1 cm squares, dried cut wakame seaweed.

Shiitake mushrooms, tofu.

Kabocha squash chopped in bite-sized pieces (this take a while to cook), shiitake, tofu.

Thinly sliced potatoes, thinly sliced onions.

Mixed mushrooms (shiitake, shimeji, etc.)

Bamboo shoots, wakame seaweed.

Diagonally sliced leek, tofu.

Spinach, tofu, green onions.

Whatever you have in your refrigerator.

Tips:

Add wakame close to serving time. Wakame left a long time in the soup tends to get a bit slimy.

Less is more. Keep your ingredients few. It’s not stew, it’s soup.

If you want to make miso soup with a mushroom base, which is very delicious, soak 2-4 dried shiitake mushrooms (for 30-60 minutes) in the water you will use for the soup. Take them out, remove the stems, slice them, and return to the pan. The mushrooms make a nice soup base, so you may not need any dashi. Continue cooking as for basic miso soup.