Miso soup is nutritious, and you can put in whatever ingredient you want, like meat, vegetables, mushrooms…though the most important thing is to make good dashi for good miso soup.

Recipe:

Make dashi (click here for how to make bonito stock or dashi)

Bring dashi to the boil and add miso. Stir in to dissolve, then add whatever ingredients you like. The amount of miso depends on what ingredients you put in, and especially if you are adding watery ingredients like tofu and wakame (see photo right), make the soup a bit stronger in flavour. For explanation of different kinds of miso click here.

Some basic ingredients to put in your Miso Soup:

Tofu, goes well with:
-shallots
-mitsuba-relation of parsley and coriander, also called trefoil or honewort; tastes like sorrel or celery
-fried bean curd (abura-age)
-steamed eggplant
-snow peas
-nameko (mushroom) and shallots

Wakame (seaweed), goes well with:
-bamboo shoots
-pumpkin
-fried bean curd (abura-age)
-mushrooms (any kind, there’s lots)

Daikon (white radish), goes well with:
-shiitake mushrooms
-satoimo (taro)
-fried bean curd (abura-age)
-shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves, or other greens)
-mitsuba

Potato, sweet peas, and butter (with red or Aka Miso)

Check out this Food Safari video to see how to make miso soup.

by Masako Fukui, Kei’s Kitchen