Miso Soup Recipes

Miso soup is one of the basic components of a Japanese meal. When you have a bowl of rice, miso soup will be served in most cases.

Depending on the ingredients you add to the miso soup, you make the soup slightly different way. In this post, you will find two different ways of making miso soup indicating when to use each method.

Miso soup is misoshiru (味噌汁) in Japanese and is a generic name for Japanese soup made with dashi (出汁) stock and miso (味噌).  Typically, you will have a couple of ingredients cooked in the soup but there are no rules as to how many ingredients and what kind of ingredients must be in the soup.  Some miso soups have meat or fish in them.

About Miso

Miso is a traditional Japanese seasoning made from soya beans which has undergone fermentation and looks like thick paste. Although all miso has a brownish colour,  the colour varies a lot depending on the region and the method of the miso production. In addition to soya beans, miso  sometimes contains rice, barley or other ingredients and you can see grains in it.

Clockwise from top: Shiro-miso, Awase-miso, Aka-miso. From Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries web site.

The most common miso categories are shiro-miso (白味噌), aka-miso (赤味噌) and awase-miso (合わせ味噌). 

Shiro (白) means white and as the name implies, shiro-miso is a light coloured miso. It contains less salt than other types of miso and you can even taste a sweetness. It is preferred by the people in the western part of Japan such as Kyoto and Osaka. The most famous shiro-miso is called Saikyo Miso (西京味噌) meaning Kyoto style miso.

Aka (赤) means red and as you can guess, aka-miso has a deep reddish brown colour. It contains much more salt than shiro-miso. Unlike shiro-miso, which has shorter fermentation period, aka-miso takes more than a year to ferment, resulting in the dark colour. Aka-miso has a rich flavour and people in northern part of Japan tend to consumes aka-miso.

Awase-miso sits in the middle from both a colour and saltiness perspective. Most miso paste you can buy at supermarkets outside Japan are awase-miso and I think that this is the most commonly used miso in Japan as well.

Miso Soup Ingredients

You can use any type of miso paste to make miso soups. Some say that particular ingredients are suitable/not suitable for certain types of miso, eg. plain ingredients such as tofu should go with aka-miso, while ingredients with a rich flavour such as fish should go with shiro-miso. This might be true but if you use awase-miso, any combination of ingredients would be fine, in my view.

Many miso soup ingredients are vegetables. There are so many combinations you can make up and the possibilities are almost endless. I have created a separate post, Miso Soup Ingredient Combinations, where I have suggested some combinations of ingredients for miso soup. Ingredients in this post are all vegetables except one.

How to Make Miso Soup

The fundamental process of making miso soup is quite simple: Chop your vegetables, cook in homemade dashi stock (refer to Home Style Japanese Dashi Stock) or a sachet of dashi powder, and mix miso paste into it when the vegetables are cooked through. However, when the ingredients are so delicate or hardly require cooking, miso paste needs to be added  first. I have created two miso soup recipes to show you how ingredients are added to the soup at different stages of the cooking process.

Tofu and Wakame Moso Soup

I used tofu (豆腐) and wakame (ワカメ, seaweed) in the first recipe. This is the most classic miso soup ingredient combination for Japanese people so you can’t go wrong with this. Tofu is very delicate and wakame does not require much cooking so these ingredients are to be added after miso is added to the dashi.

Wakame seaweed usually comes in dried, cut form like this.

Wakame is one kind of edible seaweed. You can buy wakame at Asian grocery stores, mostly as dried wakame. Some are already cut into small sizes and you can simply add them directly into the miso soup to rehydrate. If not cut into pieces, you will need to cut them after rehydrating them.

You might find frozen fresh wakame. They are not cut into small pieces and are usually coated with salt to keep them fresh. So you’ll have take what you need and soak them in water to remove the saltiness before using it.

Daikon and Aburaage Miso Soup

The second recipe is daikon (大根, white radish) and aburaage (油揚げ) miso soup. The daikon needs to be cooked before miso is added. Daikon and aburaage miso soup is ranked amongst the top 5 popular ingredient combinations for miso soup in a couple of Japanese miso soup ranking web sites. Daikon needs to be cooked through before adding miso.

Aburaage (油揚げ) is a deep fried thinly sliced tofu. You can buy Aburaage from Asian grocery stores. They are sold frozen and usually come in a pack of 3. Unless you are in Japan, you will have to buy frozen Aburaage. Before using it, you would normally pour boiling water over Abruaage to get rid of excess oil, squeeze the water out, then cut it to required size.

Aburaage is a deep fried thinly sliced tofu. One sheet is about 8cm x 14cm.

The miso used in this recipe is awase-miso. If you are using shiro-miso, you might need to add more miso as it is not as salty as awase-miso. In the case of aka-miso, it would be the opposite, i.e. reduce the amount of miso as it is saltier. In fact aka-miso is twice as salty as shiro-miso. It also depends on your liking — some prefer saltier, some don’t. You just have to adjust and discover the right amount of miso for yourself.

Serving and Eating Miso Soup

The serving bowls for miso soup are quite different from those for rice or for Western style soups. Japanese miso soup bowls are called owan (お椀) and are not ceramic. They are traditionally made of wood finished with Japanese lacquer called uruhi (漆). But for day-to-day use, there are plastic versions of owan which are made to look like wooden products. Please visit Miso Soup Ingredient Combinations to see the photos of different owan.

When sipping the miso soup and eating the vegetables in it, you must lift the owan just like the way you eat rice from ochawan (お茶碗, Japanese rice bowl). In the case of eating rice from ochawan, you should not place the bowl to your lips to slide the rice into your mouth. But for miso soup, you’d have to place the owan to your lips and sip the soup from it. Leaving the owan on the table and picking the vegetables from the soup to eat them is considered bad manners.

Yumiko

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Miso Soup Recipe - Tofu and Wakame Miso Soup

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

5 mins

Total Time

10 mins

 

This is the recipe for delicate ingredients such as tofu. Tofu and wakame miso soup is the most popular miso soup among the Japanese. Delicate tofu goes so well with wakame. I sometimes add sliced aburaage to make it a bit richer. You can use Konbu dashi instead (see Varieties of Dashi Stocks) to make this soup vegetarian.

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Japanese

Serves: 2

Author: Yumiko

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

• 80g (3oz) firm tofu , diced into 2cm (¾”) cubes (Note 1)
• 2g (0.1oz) dried wakame (seaweed) , rehydrated and cut into small pieces if they are long
• 400ml (13.5oz) dashi stock (homemade or use instant dashi powder)
• 1 ½ tbsp miso (Note 2)

Garnish (optional)

• Julienned shallots

Instructions

1. Boil dashi in a pot over medium heat.
2. Add miso to a small sieve that has a handle. Dip the sieve half way into the dashi. Using a spoon, a small spatula or chopsticks, mix the immersed miso into the dashi through the sieve so that the miso dissolves into the soup without creating lumps. (Note 3)
3. Add tofu and wakame to the pot (Note 4). When the tofu starts tumbling as the miso soup just starts boiling again, turn off the heat. Do not keep boiling as the tofu will be overcooked and the miso flavour will also be lost.
4. Serve immediately in a small soup bowl sprinkled with shallots if using.

Recipe Notes

1. I used firm tofu called momen-dofu as I like its flavour better than silken tofu and it is easier to handle. Silken tofu is also fine but be careful not to break the cubes as they are very soft. Eextra firm tofu does not suit a delicate soup like this. The quantity of tofu is also flexible. If you like tofu, increase the amount. The same applies to quantity of wakame.

2. Depending on the type of miso and the brand within the same type of miso, saltiness varies. So you might have to adjust the amount of miso to add to the dashi. I used awase-miso in this recipe.

If you have miso which already contains dashi, you can use water instead of dashi stock. However, I think that the dashi flavour mixed in the miso is not as strong as it should be. You might still have to add some dashi to the water.

3. If you don’t have an appropriate sieve to use, place the miso paste in a small bowl, add some dashi to it and dissolve the miso in it. Then pour the miso mix back into the pot. It is important not to just drop the paste into the pot as is, because (1) it will take a while to dissolve, (2) in trying to dissolve the miso, you will probably break delicate ingredients like tofu.

4. Unlike other vegetables, tofu and wakame do not have to be cooked very long. In addition, tofu is very delicate, hence miso soup is made before adding ingredients. The same method should be used when making miso with beaten eggs which is listed in Miso Soup Ingredients Suggestions.

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Miso Soup Recipe - Daikon and Aburaage Miso Soup

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

8 mins

Total Time

13 mins

 

When ingredients need to be cooked through, use this method to make miso soup.One of the top 5 popular miso soups in Japan is also one of my all time favourites. Wakame goes well with daikon, too. Why don't you add wakame as well to give a different texture to the soup?

Recipe Type: Soup

Cuisine: Japanese

Serves: 2

Author: Yumiko

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

• 100g (3.5oz) daikon (white raddish) , 3mm (⅛") slice then into quarter circles (Note 1)
• ½ aburaage sheet (Note 2)
• 400ml (14oz) dashi stock (homemade or use instant dashi powder)
• 1 ½ tbsp miso paste (Note 3)

Garnish (optional)

• Chopped shallots

Instructions

1. Pour boiling water over the aburaage to remove excess oil, then squeeze the water out. Cut it lengthways into half then cut into 5mm / 0.2 inch wide strips crosswise.
2. Add dashi, daikon and aburaage in a pot and place it over medium heat. Cook for about 5-6 minutes or until the daikon is almost cooked through.
3. Add miso in a small sieve with a handle. Dip the sieve half way into the soup using a spoon, small spatula or chopsticks, mix the miso into the soup without creating lumps. (Note 4)
4. Turn off the heat when the soup starts boiling. Do not keep boiling as the soup will lose the flavour of the miso.
5. Serve immediately in a small soup bowl, sprinkled with shallots if using.

Recipe Notes

1. You can slice daikon in a different way if you like. Cutting daikon into sticks is also quite common.

2. Aburaage is deep fried, thinly sliced tofu which you can buy at Asian grocery stores. They come in a frozen pack of 3 sheets.

3. Depending on the type of miso and the brand within the same type of miso, saltiness varies. So you might have to adjust the amount of miso to add to the dashi. I used awase-miso in this recipe.

If you have miso which already contains dashi, you can use water instead of dashi stock. However, I think that the dashi flavour mixed in the miso is not as strong as it should be. You might still have to add some dashi to the water.

4. If you don’t have an appropriate sieve to use, place the miso paste in a small bowl, add some dashi to it and dissolve the miso in it. Then pour the miso mix back into the pot. It is important not to just drop the paste into the pot as it will take a while to dissolve the miso and prolonged cooking of the soup after adding miso will lose good flavour of miso.