Miso soup

Dashi with miso dissolved into it off the boil, because boiling miso is the one way to ruin it.

Fish, Tofu. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 800 ml dashi
• 4 tablespoons miso
• 200 g silken tofu, in 1.5 cm cubes
• 10 g dried wakame
• 3 spring onions, finely sliced

Method

1. THE MISO GOES IN OFF THE BOIL AND THE SOUP NEVER BOILS AGAIN. Miso is alive and aromatic and boiling flattens it to something dull and salty within a minute. Heat off, miso in, and it is served.
2. Make the dashi as on its own page, or this is hot salty water with tofu in it. There is nothing else here to carry the soup.
3. Soak the wakame in cold water 5 minutes. It swells to roughly five times its size, so the small amount is correct; a generous handful dry gives a bowl of nothing but seaweed.
4. Heat the dashi to just below a simmer.
5. Tofu in, 2 minutes, only to warm through. It needs no cooking and a hard simmer breaks the cubes.
6. Drained wakame in.
7. TAKE THE PAN OFF THE HEAT. Put the miso in a ladle, dip the ladle into the hot dashi, and work the miso smooth with chopsticks before releasing it. Dropped in as a lump it sits on the bottom and scorches.
8. Stir once, gently.
9. Taste. Miso varies enormously in salt between types and makers -- a white one may need five tablespoons where a dark one needs three.
10. Spring onion in the bowl, not the pan. Serve at once; it settles and separates within minutes and should be stirred again before drinking.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes