Miso Soup
Miso Soup – A Japanese Staple
By Haruko Yanagita
Ingredients (Serves 4)
400 g fresh wakame, or 2 tbsp dried wakame ・1/2 a block of tofu ・800 ml dashi soup ・3-4 tbsp miso ・2 tbsp negi
Preparation
1) Wash wakame in water if fresh, soften in water if dry; cut into bite-sized pieces. Cut the tofu into small cubes, and slice the negi.
2) Pour the dashi soup in a pot, and bring to a boil.
3) When the dashi soup has boiled, reduce the heat and add the miso, ensuring that it dissolves.
4) Place the ingredients prepared in stage 1) in the pot, and turn off the heat. Serve in bowls, and eat.
Miso shiru (miso soup) is also sometimes called o-miso shiru and o-mi o-tsuke. Rice, another dish, and miso soup is a traditional Japanese breakfast. In the past, when one vegetable dish and one bowl of miso soup were the staple diet, the combination was called ichiju issai. This type of meal is plain and simple, but it is attracting renewed attention in this age of overeating as a healthy and balanced diet.
You can choose whatever you like to put in your miso soup; here we have introduced the most traditional variation, miso soup with wakame and tofu. Other combinations that can be considered standard are spinach and tofu, and daikon radish and aburage deep fried tofu; it is also common to add nameko mushrooms and clams by themselves. However, the range of possibility is really infinite. If you use an ingredient that should be cooked, though, it is probably best to add a cooking stage between stages 2) and 3) above.
You can make dashi soup using katsuo bushi, konbu, dried sardines and a variety of other ingredients, but in a pinch it is convenient to use an instant dashi. You can buy this either in packs or powdered.
Miso is made by steaming and fermenting soy beans. Tofu is made by solidifying soy milk. Both these soy products are rich in nutrients, and are known as “hatake no niku” (“vegetarian meat”). It is said that the reason that the Japanese are long-lived is because the country has a long tradition of eating a lot of soy products like miso, tofu, and natto. Natto is also delicious when you use it to flavor your miso soup.