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Japanese Clear Soup with Whiting in a red soup bowl.
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Japanese Clear Soup with Whiting (Kisu no Osuimono)
Prep Time
5 mins
Cook Time
10 mins
Total Time
15 mins
 
Whiting is often served in clear soup at special occasions because of its elegant taste and white meat. Make a knot from a fillet and serve with a green leaf in a dashi-based clear soup.
Author: Yumiko
Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)
  • 4 whiting fillets (note 1)
Clear Soup
  • 800ml/1.7pt dashi stock  (note 2)
  • 2  tsp  light soy sauce
  • 2  tsp  sake
  • ⅔  tsp  salt
Garnish
  • 4 Mizuna leaves (note 3)
Instructions
  1. Cut each fillet in the centre lengthwise, leaving 1-1.5cm intact at the tail end.
  2. Make a knot using two split ends of the fillet (see the photo in the post).

  3. Bring water in a saucepan to a boil, reduce the heat to gently simmer.

  4. Add the whiting knots to the boiling water and cook for 30 seconds (note 4). Transfer them to serving bowls using a slotted spoon or a netted strainer to serving bowls.

  5. Add the Clear Soup ingredients ito a saucepan and bring it to a boil.

  6. Pour the clear soup into serving bowls, add a green leaf to each bowl and serve while hot.

Recipe Notes

1. My fillet was about 12cm long.

2. When the dashi stock is one of the key features of the dish like today, I use ichiban-dashi (see Home Style Japanese Dashi Stock) as it has the best flavour. But if you have no time to make dashi stock from scratch, you can use a dashi pack to make clear soup. Please refer to the instructions on the pack and use the appropriate quantity of dashi pack for the dashi stock required in the recipe.

3. Japanese people often use mitsuba (三つ葉, a wild Japanese parsley or the Japanese version of Cryptotaenia), which is a Japanese herb that looks like large flat leaf parsley and has a distinct flavour unlike any other herb. But I could not find them, so I used mizuna leaves instead.

You can use other green leaves such as spinach or snow pea shoots. In the case of spinach, boil and cut to 4-5cm/2” long.

4. If your whiting fillet is large, you will need to boil it a bit longer. The idea is to cook the fish 100% at this stage.