Japanese-style Turnip Soup (Turnip Surinagashi)

Japanese-style Turnip Soup is a thick soup, like pottage with a dashi-based flavour. It is very light with a touch of sweetness, and you can enjoy the natural flavour of turnip. By using a vegetarian dashi stock such as konbu dashi, you can make it a vegetarian soup, without scallops.

In my post Japanese-style Pumpkin Soup (Pumpkin Surinagashi), I introduced the generic name of the thick soup ‘surinagash’ (すり流し) and explained details about it. Today’s soup is also a surinagashi dish, so I call it Turnip Surinagashi, which is ‘kabu no surinagashi’ (蕪のすり流し) in Japanese.

The flavour of the soup is a combination of turnip, dashi stock, and the typical Japanese seasonings. As mentioned in the post Pumpkin Surinagashi, the soup does not contain dairy products unlike many Western-style pottage soup dishes.

When I first made Turnip Surinagashi, I simply cooked turnip pieces in the broth (just like how I made Pumpkin Surinagashi) then puréed it with seasonings. When I checked the flavour of the soup, I could taste a slight bitterness, which came from the turnips.

So, I decided to sauté the turnip pieces before cooking them in a broth. Sautéing turnips brings out the sweetness from the turnips and the oil adds the richness to the soup.

What’s in my Japanese-style Turnip Soup (Turnip Surinagashi)

• Turnip sliced into smaller pieces
• Vegetable oil
• Dashi stock
• Shiro shōyu (white soy sauce) or usukuchi shōyu (light soy sauce)
• Mirin
• Salt
• Finely chopped chives for garnish

The flavouring of the broth is fundamentally the same as Pumpkin Surinagashi, but I used shiro shōyu. It is the best soy sauce to use when you want to maintain the original colour of the vegetable soup, because the colour of the shiro shōyu is semitransparent. Usukuchi shōyu is the next best. It’s OK to use normal soy sauce but the colour of the soup becomes brownish.

How to Make Japanese-style Turnip Soup (Turnip Surinagashi)

It takes a little bit longer to make today’s soup than Pumpkin Surinagashi, but the process is still very simple (see the video).

1. Sauté turnip pieces in a frying pan at low heat.
2. Put turnip pieces and all the other ingredients, excluding the garnish in a pot.
3. Cook until the turnips become tender.
4. Purée the turnip in the broth using a stick blender or transfer it to a blender to purée.
5. Pour the soup into a serving bowl and scatter the chives.

To keep the colour of the soup as white as possible, you don’t want to burn the turnip pieces when sautéing them. That’s why you need to cook the turnip pieces at low temperature even if it takes longer to cook.

Turnip Surinagashi served with chopped chives looks pretty and tastes delicious. I like the contrast between the white soup and the bright green of the chives.

But I recently saw on the internet a picture of turnip surinagashi that had sautéed scallops as a topping. I think the addition of scallops gives a new dimension to this simple soup and upgrades the soup to an enjoyable luxury.  Here is how to do it.

How to Upgrade A Simple Turnip Surinagashi with Scallops

Additional Ingredients

Oops, a plate of chives was accidentally added in the photo – please ignore.

• Fresh scallops (preferably sashimi quality)
• Salt
• Coarsely ground black pepper

You will need 1-1½ scallops per serving. Because I only seared the surface of the scallops to brown them and the centre of the flesh was uncooked, I used sashimi quality scallops. If your scallops are not OK to eat raw, you need to cook them through.

Cooking and Serving Scallops (see the video)

You will reuse the frying pan that you used to sauté the turnip pieces (there should be some oil left in the pan).

1. Heat the frying pan over high heat.
2. Pat-dry the scallops and place them in the pan. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the scallops.
3. Sear both sides of the scallops, then quarter each scallop.
4. Pour the Turnip Surinagashi into a serving bowl.
5. Gently place 4-6 scallop pieces in the centre of the bowl, then scatter the chives next to them.
6. Make lines on both sides of the scallops with black pepper (or simply sprinkle the pepper).

Japanese-style Turnip Soup (Turnip Surinagashi) is delicious with and without scallops. Instead of scallops, you can use a few pieces of cooked crab meat or prawns too. For the green colour, you can substitute with blanched spinach or even the leaves of the turnip if they are tender and green (mines were thick and reddish). The combinations are limitless.

This Japanese-style Turnip Soup freezes well. You can freeze it as individual servings and heat it up as you need it.

Yumiko

Watch How To Make It

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Japanese-style Turnip Soup (Turnip Surinagashi)

Prep Time

10 mins

Cook Time

17 mins

Total Time

27 mins

 

Japanese-style Turnip Soup is a thick soup like pottage with a dashi-based flavour, which is called Turnip Surinagashi. The soup is very light and has a touch of sweetness. You can enjoy the natural flavour of turnip in the soup. Watch the video.

You can upgrade a plain Turnip Surinagashi to a more luxurious soup by adding scallops as a topping. This recipe includes cooking scallops and serving Japanese-style Turnip Soup with scallops.

If you use vegetarian dashi stock such as konbu dashi, the soup becomes a vegetarian soup.

Total Time is based on serving the soup with scallops.

Don't forget to see the section 'MEAL IDEAS' below the recipe card! It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and this recipe that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Japanese

Keyword: japanese soup, turnip recipe, turnip soup, vegetarian soup

Serves: 2 - 3 Servings

Author: Yumiko

Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)

• 300g/0.7lb turnip peeled
• 1 tbsp oil
• 400ml/0.8pt dashi stock (note 1)
• 1 tbsp shiro shōyu (white soy sauce) (note 2)
• 1 tbsp mirin
• A pinch of salt

Garnish

• 1 tbsp chives finely chopped (note 3)

Scallop Toppings (optional)

• 4 scallops (note 4)
• Salt
• Black pepper coarsely ground

Instructions

1. Quarter the turnip lengthwise, then slice it into 5-7mm/3⁄16-¼" thick pieces, perpendicular to the first cut.

2. Add oil to a large frying pan and heat over low heat. Add the turnip pieces to the pan and sauté for about 5 minutes. Turn the turnip pieces over occasionally, making sure that each side of the turnip pieces are cooked, and the surface is not getting burnt.

3. When the surface of the turnip becomes semitransparent, remove the pan from the heat (they don't have to be cooked through).

4. Put dashi stock, soy sauce, mirin, and a pinch of salt into a saucepan, transfer the turnip pieces into the pot, and bring it to a boil (note 5).

5. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 7-10 minutes until the turnip pieces are cooked through and soft.
6. Turn the heat off and let it cool slightly.

7. Using a stick blender, purée the turnip until the soup becomes a smooth and creamy consistency (note 6).

8. If you are serving the soup with just chives for topping, pour the soup into a serving bowl, sprinkle the chives in the middle of the soup, and serve while hot.

9. If you are serving the soup with scallops, continue to the next instructions.

Serving Turnip Soup with Scallops

1. Heat the frying pan that you used to sauté the turnip on high heat.

2. Pat-dry the scallops and place them in the pan.

3. Sprinkle salt over the scallops and cook for 30-60 seconds, until the bottom of the scallops is lightly browned.

4. Turn them over and cook further 30-60 seconds to get the other side of the scallops browned.

5. Transfer the scallops onto a cutting board and quarter each scallop.

6. Pour the soup into a serving bowl (note 7), and gently place 4-6 scallop pieces (depending on the number of servings) in the centre.

7. Scatter the chives next to the scallops, then draw a line with black pepper on both sides of the scallops. Serve immediately.

Recipe Notes

1. If possible, make dashi stock from scratch per my recipe Homem Style Japanese Dashi Stock. It gives the soup a better flavour to the soup.

Use konbu dashi to make the soup vegetarian.

2.  You can substitute it with usukuchi shōyu (light soy sauce), but the lighter the colour of the soy sauce, the better you can maintain the original white colour of the turnip soup.

You can use normal soy sauce as well if you don’t mind the colour of the soup becoming a bit brownish.

3. Instead of chives, you can serve blanched spinach or even the stem of turnip leaves if they are tender.

4. Although it is optional, the addition of a small amount of seafood makes this dish visually more attractive as well as more luxurious. Cooked crab leg meat or prawns can be a good alternative to the scallops. A couple of pieces per serving would be great.

5. I could add the broth ingredients to the frying pan with the sautéed turnip in it and cook the turnip. But the water tends to evaporate much faster than the method in the instruction due to the large surface area of the frying pan. I also needed the frying pan to sear my scallops.

If you are not adding scallops and you want to use the frying pan to cook the turnip in the broth, I would suggest that you place a lid on to prevent evaporation.

6. Because of the pulp in the turnip, you will not get an extremely smooth texture like the puréed potato (see the video for consistency).

Instead of a stick blender, you can transfer the turnip in broth into a blender and puré it.

7. If the soup is not hot, reheat it before serving.

8. Turnip Surinagashi keeps a day or two in the fridge, but the colour of the soup deteriorates slightly. It freezes well. I store individual serving size in the fridge.

9. Nutrition per serving assuming the recipe is for 3 servings. It is also assumed that normal soy sauce is used (there aren't huge differences in nutrition values).

serving: 246g calories: 105kcal fat: 5.9g (9%) saturated fat: 0.6g (3%) trans fat: 0.0g polyunsaturated fat: 1g monounsaturated fat: 3.7g cholesterol: 1.3mg (0%) sodium: 609mg (25%) potassium: 404mg (12%) carbohydrates: 9g (3%) dietary fibre: 1.8g (7%) sugar: 6g protein: 4.3g vitamin a: 0.2% vitamin c: 35% calcium: 2.8% iron: 2.2%