miso soup

Da and I enjoy eating Japanese food. Whilst I have fried yaki udon for family and friends to eat, I have not advanced to the stage of making sushi yet.

Miso soup is a Japanese soup made from a stock called dashi (usually made from dried kelp, dried bonito flakes, dried small sardines, dried shiitake mushrooms, etc) mixed with miso paste (that is, fermented soybean paste). Other ingredients are often added to the miso soup to enhance the taste of the soup, such as seaweed, toufu, etc.

Recently, Da and I bought a tub of dashi miso paste from the Japanese section of NTUC Supermarket. The dashi and the miso in this paste have already been mixed. As such, we do not need to buy the dashi stock and the miso paste separately.

I decided to try my hand at cooking miso soup. This soup is not difficult to cook and although the traditional miso soup does not contain any meat or seafood, at the end of the day, it is all up to personal preference.

The miso soup that I cooked was the traditional type, that is, without meat nor seafood.

Ingredients

4 cups water
4 to 5 tbsp dashi miso paste
1 medium red onion
2 stalks of spring onion
1 pkt silken toufu
seaweed

Method

1. Boil the water in a pot.

2. When the water has boiled, add the dashi miso paste and mix well.

3. Slice the red onion into rings and add to the soup.

4. Slice the spring onion diagonally and add to the soup.

5. Dice the toufu and add to the soup.

6. Cut the seaweed into strips and add to the soup.

7. When the soup has boiled, reduce the heat and simmer until the onion rings have softened. The onion rings would have lightened in colour.

8. Do a taste-test. If the soup is not salty enough, add more dashi miso paste to taste.

9. Ladle onto a bowl and sit back to enjoy a steaming hot bowl of miso soup.

Tips

1. As the dashi miso paste is salty, if you intend to use seasoned seaweed, I would suggest that you start with 4 tbsp of dashi miso paste (instead of 5 tbsp). You can always add more dashi miso paste to the soup when you do your taste-test, if you find that the soup is not salty enough.

2. When buying the toufu, choose the type that is plain toufu instead of egg toufu. The soup tastes better with plain toufu.

3. If you are unable to find dashi miso paste, you can substitute with:-

(a) 2 tsp dashi granules and 3 tbsp miso paste; or

(b) 4 cups dashi soup stock and 4 tbsp miso paste - if you buy dashi soup stock (instead of dashi granules), please omit the 4 cups of water that I mentioned in my recipe above because the stock is already in liquid form.

Regardless whether you opt for (a) or (b), it is best to do a taste-test before you serve the miso soup as each of us has different levels of tolerance of saltiness. As such, if you find that the soup is not salty enough, you can add more miso paste to the soup before you serve the soup.