Miso Soup Ingredients
Dashi
I see a lot of recipes for Miso Soup out there using water as the base. This is like making chicken soup with just water and salt without the chicken. Dashi is a defining component of miso soup, and along with miso and water, it’s the only other required ingredient. You can read all about how to make dashi here, but it’s traditionally made with a combination of kombu (kelp) and some kind of dried fish (such as katsuobushi, niboshi, or yakiago). These days there are convenient dashi packs you can use as well as instant dashi granules though these will not taste as good as making it from scratch. For plant-based dashi, you can use the kelp stock without adding dried fish or rehydrate shiitake mushrooms in it to give your vegan dashi more umami.
Miso Paste
Miso is a versatile, fermented soybean paste integral to Japanese cuisine. It’s made primarily from soybeans, salt, and a culture starter known as koji (which can be propagated on rice, barley, or soybeans). Its rich, umami-laden flavor results from aging it from a few days to several years. There are many types of miso paste, each with a unique flavor profile and color, but they can broadly be divided into three categories. These include white miso paste (Shiro Miso), which boasts a mellow sweetness and light color thanks to a shorter fermentation period and higher rice koji content. Yellow miso (Tanshokumiso) spans a broader flavor range, varying from moderately mild to robust, with a saltier profile than white miso. Lastly, red miso (Akamiso) enjoys a longer aging time, resulting in a darker hue, firmer texture, and a complex, nutty taste that’s teeming with umami. Almost any variety of miso will work for miso soup, and the type that’s used depends largely on the region of Japan you’re from. You can learn more about the different varieties on my What is Miso post.
Vegetables
I like my miso soup to be loaded up with so many veggies that it almost looks like a stew. Vegetables not only add color, nutrients, and fiber to the soup, they also contribute to the flavor of the soup. Because I like my miso soup to have a subtle sweetness, I tend to add at least one sweeter vegetable such as carrots, onions, sweet potato, or kabocha. Here are just a few suggestions on the types of vegetables you can add.
Root vegetables - whether you’re talking carrots, sweet potatoes, onions, or burdock, root vegetables contribute both flavor and bulk to your miso soup. These tend to take the longest to cook through, which is why I like to add them at the very beginning. Squashes - Kabocha, butternut squash, and acorn squash are a few that come to mind right away, but zucchini and other softer squash will work as well. Add these in at the beginning as they take a while to cook through. Eggplants - Despite being relatively soft, eggplant requires a surprising amount of time to cook through, so I usually recommend adding them relatively early on, unless you’re planning to add some very tough root vegetables. Green vegetables - Green veggies like green beans, okra, asparagus, broccoli shouldn’t go in at the beginning, or they’ll end up losing their color and getting mushy. That being said, they need more time to cook than leafy greens, so these go into the soup in somewhere in the middle. Leafy greens - You can use almost any leafy green ranging from spinach to cabbage, to kale, to molokhia. Unless it’s something I want very tender such as cabbage, I usually put leafy greens in at the very end to preserve their color. Sea vegetables (a.k.a. seaweed) -In Japan, there are dozens of seaweed varieties, most of which are fair game for adding to miso soup. The most common one is dried wakame seaweed. Because seaweed cooks very quickly, it will turn to mush if you overcook it, so save it until the very end.
Tofu
Pretty much anything tofu-related is fair game here, including ganmodoki (tofu fritter), aburaage (thin fried tofu), atsuage (thick fried tofu), koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu), and of course plain old firm or silken tofu. If the tofu has been fried, I usually put it in just before adding the miso, if it has not been fried I’ll add it after adding the miso. This is because raw tofu can fall apart while you’re trying to get the miso to dissolve.
Garnishes
Garnishes such as scallions (green onions), aonori, and mitsuba can be added straight into the bowl when you serve the miso soup.
Vegan Miso Soup
Although most dashi includes dried fish, making miso soup plant-based is as simple as using plant-based dashi. You can head to my post about making dashi from scratch to learn about making a plant-based dashi. As for the miso, most miso is vegan-friendly, but just be sure to read the ingredient label to make sure it doesn’t include any fish.
How to Make Miso Soup
Once you have all the ingredients the process for making miso soup is straightforward. The first step is to cook the hard ingredients such as carrots and potatoes in dashi broth until they’re tender. Then you just have to add the miso. I like to dissolve the miso with some of the broth in a ladle or small bowl using chopsticks before adding it to the soup. This prevents clumps of undissolved miso. Boiling the soup after the miso has been added will cause it to separate, which is why it’s important to turn down the heat before you add the miso. Because different types of miso can have varying levels of salinity, it’s also important to taste the soup as you add the miso mixture so you don’t make it too salty. After the miso has been added, you can add delicate things such as tofu, as well as any leafy greens or sea vegetables that you don’t want to overcook. Finally, you can stir in garnishes such as scallions and mitsuba when you serve your soup.
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