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.
- 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
- 1 tbsp chives finely chopped (note 3)
- 4 scallops (note 4)
- Salt
- Black pepper coarsely ground
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Quarter the turnip lengthwise, then slice it into 5-7mm/3⁄16-¼" thick pieces, perpendicular to the first cut.
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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.
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When the surface of the turnip becomes semitransparent, remove the pan from the heat (they don't have to be cooked through).
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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).
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Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 7-10 minutes until the turnip pieces are cooked through and soft.
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Turn the heat off and let it cool slightly.
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Using a stick blender, purée the turnip until the soup becomes a smooth and creamy consistency (note 6).
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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.
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If you are serving the soup with scallops, continue to the next instructions.
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Heat the frying pan that you used to sauté the turnip on high heat.
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Pat-dry the scallops and place them in the pan.
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Sprinkle salt over the scallops and cook for 30-60 seconds, until the bottom of the scallops is lightly browned.
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Turn them over and cook further 30-60 seconds to get the other side of the scallops browned.
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Transfer the scallops onto a cutting board and quarter each scallop.
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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.
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Scatter the chives next to the scallops, then draw a line with black pepper on both sides of the scallops. Serve immediately.
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%