5 Ingredients or Fewer

Miso Soup

April 24, 2014
4
3 Ratings
Photo by James Ransom
  • Serves 1
Author Notes

A basic miso soup that can be easily doubled or tripled. —Joy Belamarich

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 1 cup Dashi stock
  • 1 tablespoon miso paste (white or yellow)
  • Silken or soft tofu, cubed
  • Scallion, chopped
  • 1 piece wakame (optional)
Directions
  1. Bring your dashi stock to a low simmer in a medium sized pot.
  2. In a small bowl, temper your miso paste with 2 tablespoons or so of the hot stock. Pour the mixture back into the pot, then add your tofu and wakame if using.
  3. Let simmer for 1 more minute, then remove from heat, and ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with chopped scallion.

See what other Food52ers are saying.

  • Lanie Bryana Hei
    Lanie Bryana Hei
  • Max Holmes
    Max Holmes
  • Surin
    Surin
  • Pamela
    Pamela
Writer, Fooder, Blogger. New Yorker turned Cape Coder.

7 Reviews

Max H. August 5, 2017
Dashi is made with kombu and dried shiitake mushrooms, one pack of good kombu (about $10) will last you ages. If you also dry out your own shiitake mushrooms by washing them in saline water, slicing them into small pieces, then putting them in an open oven of 100 degrees Celcius for about 2-4 hours you will save lots of money. All you do to make the dashi once you have done this is immerse about 2-3 shiitake mushrooms in 2 quarts of water with 2 large pieces of kombu and leave it in a container for about 12 hours and remove the mushrooms and kombu. Don't use wakame, you can use ingredients such as ginger but it isn't necessary. Bonito can be used but I am vegetarian so I have never tried and never will.
 
Surin January 19, 2016
1. There are many types of dashi. You can make it from bonito flakes (look for katsuobushi flakes in red and clear packages -- you can even buy them on Amazon). You can make it from kombu kelp (vegan). You can make it from a mix of the two (awase -- pretty common in Japan).

2. You don't make dashi with wakame.

3. Don't use the powdered stuff, it's full of chemicals. Dashi from katsuobushi takes about 3 minutes to make. Boil water, throw in the fish flakes and lower the temp a bit, then skim them out after a few minutes.

Also, this recipe is super weird because it calls for "one piece" of wakame (which usually comes in lots of tiny pieces). Soak your wakame pieces before using and wring out the excess water. Or better yet, go to a real Japanese recipe site and follow a better recipe there!
 
Pamela September 16, 2014
This is not a vegan dish if you use Dashi stock, which is made from bonito fish.
 
mpsaba123 October 25, 2014
Not necessarily....you can make your dashi with Waka me solely

 
Lanie B. May 24, 2014
I went into a grocery store selling Asian foods and they had no idea what the heck Dashi stock was
 
JohnL October 7, 2015
Lanie, Some of the people working in supermarkets don't even know what they have in their own stores. If its a big Asian supermarket (with a Japanese section) they almost certainly carry instant dashi--it comes powdered, in a box with envelopes inside. Will last you forever. You just add water.
 
R May 12, 2014
It's not a real Miso Soup at all!! You should make real Dashi, not Dashi stock! by a japanese woman