Miso Soup 味噌汁
Miso soup from scratch isn’t as hard as you might think. It doesn’t take long to make – boss this and you can get it to table in 15 minutes. Once you have the key ingredients (katsuobushi flakes, miso, mirin) add what you like, although being biased, I’m sticking to this iteration which is similar to but heartier than the miso soup you’d typically get at a sushi bar.
We’ve been having this as our Monday meal since lockdown no.1 and have not tired of it yet. It’s comforting and will suit anyone one on a 5:2 intermittent fast for those 500 cal. days. Despite its relatively high salt content, the health benefits of fermented soya beans packs it with vitamins, promotes good gut health and helps with digestion. This is also why you must not let it boil. Boiling the soup will destroy the probiotic cultures and compromise its umami-ness. Plus the seaweed will disintegrate.
Japan has hundreds of miso varieties. For this recipe, I use red Hikari miso because it is readily available in London and the higher percentage of soy beans and longer fermentation process lends a deeper flavour to the soup. For the base, I make katsuo dashi using katsuobushi – dried and smoked skipjack tuna flakes. I used to make awase dashi (using kombu & katsuobushi) but during the first lockdown I couldn’t get kombu for long enough to decide the soup did not miss it.
If you are vegan/vegetarian, you will want kombu because you can make a fine dashi with it. All else failing, reconstituting dried shiitake mushrooms will also give you stock you can use and mushrooms for the soup.
For 2 as a main, or 4 starters
Ingredients:
- 20g Katsuobushi flakes
- 1 litre boiling water
- 2 tbsp. Hikari red miso
- 1 tblsp. mirin
- 325 g firm or medium firm tofu cubed
- 1 x bunch spring onions, sliced into rounds, 5mm-1cm
- 10 shiitake mushroom, 5mm slices
- 7 sheets nori seaweed, cut into short strips
Instructions:
- First begin by making the dashi that forms the base of your soup: boil 1l of water and soak the Katsuobushi flakes in it for 10 minutes. They will sink to the bottom so you can stir it once or twice to help the flavour develop
- Meanwhile mix 2 tablespoons of Hikari miso with 1 tablespoon mirin in a bowl to form a paste
- Drain the dashi through a fine sieve directly into a pan, discarding the katsuobushi after squeezing it out
- Add the miso/mirin mix to the dashi and stir until incorporated
- Placing the pan on a low heat, add the tofu, spring onion and shiitake slices
- Cut the nori seaweed into short strips and add when the soup just reaches a simmer (you want to do this towards the very end because the seaweed will start to disintegrate if left for too long. Even if this happens, the nori imparts a lovely flavour to the soup, so don’t let it stress you out)
- Definitely do not let soup boil, so keep an eye on it and when shows any sign of going from simmer to boil, remove from the heat and serve
- The amount above makes for 4 small servings: for a main, we have one bowl and then the other, so effectively in two servings. Take the soup off the heat between servings so it does not boil
FU2020 