Making Miso Soup

I love miso soup and I asked a couple of my Japanese friends how they do it at home. I wanted to avoid making miso soup entirely from a packet but I didn't have time to make traditional dashi from scratch.

So here's my 'home cooked version' of miso soup. It doesn't take long to make a good miso soup at home.

Simply put, miso soup is made of dashi stock + konbu (seaweed) + miso paste.

1/  Make the dashi. Put the 'fish sachet' in a pot of water. Use 1 sachet for about 500-600ml water. If you're making more, you might want to put two dashi packs in. Bring to boil. 

DASHI

Dashi stock is basically fish stock made out of bonito flakes. The traditional way of making dashi usually takes an hour. I have found easier options in Nijiya or Mitsuwa supermarket.

This is a packet of pure dried shave bonito. I place the fish flakes in a tea bag holder (see below) This keeps the fish flakes in the packet and you can discard the packet after it has sufficiently flavored the soup.

This dashi pack is called "Iriko". It comprises of sardines, bonito, yeast extract and sardine extract. One packet should be enough for 600 ml.

This wafu dashi is in powdered granule form. It is an all-in-one dashi soup stock. (it has bonito extract and even kelp powder). No coloring, MSG or artificial addtives added.

2/ Add the konbu 

KONBU

You can add real konbu seaweed (sold dried in packets) or in powder form. 

3/ Add miso paste. 2Tbsp for 600ml and  3-4 Tbsp for 1 litre. Adjust taste. Miso is salty so add gradually.  

MISO PASTE

White miso paste is used for miso soup. My japanese friend tells me that most of the brands are the same. I picked up this brand at Nijiya as it had dashi and miso and it worked well. 

I found this miso paste at Lion supermarket in San Jose. I picked it up as it had no MSG and was GMO free. This paste is a little darker but also works well with miso soup. 

Other Ingredients

I usually add shimeiji mushrooms, soft tofu and very finely chopped spring onions. For an added seafood taste, I love to add clams. The best of course, is to use fresh clams. However I recently found out from my Japanese friend that you can buy frozen clams in small packets in the frozen section in Nijiya. It doesn't replace the taste of fresh live clams but its really convenient to open a packet after a long day at work.