Recipe: Miso Shiru

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:22:51 +0000

I just thought I’d post on a little bit of simple cooking for a change, and something fairly synonymous with Japan - miso shiru. This is one of the recipes I’ve kind of worked along with of late - a carrot and daikon vegetable one.

I’m a big fan of soups generally, growing up with Scotch broth and chunky vegetable soups in the UK, so I tend to go a little heavier in this recipe than others.

Ingredients:
1 litre of water
150g of daikon
80g of carrots
100g of miso/dashi paste
135g of kinu tofu
Some Worcester sauce
Some wakame (type of seaweed)

Cooking time: 20-30mins. (to whatever). Makes 4-5 bowls worth.

First off, get the water boiling in a decent sized pan. Add the carrots and daikon to this. I tend to leave the vegetables chunky - about 1cm+ on a side - and since carrots and daikon are fairly hard, you want to soften them up a little before adding the rest of the ingredients.

This is when I usually add a few drops of Worcester sauce, which some people don’t go for, but I find it a bit more subtle than soy or bare salt, but still adding something to the background flavour.

Once the vegetables have softened up a little I take it off the boil, then slowly stir in the miso-dashi paste. I’m lazy - I don’t make my own dashi, and since I’ve seen nice old ladies buying the same stuff I use, it must be legitimate, right? I just don’t have time for boiling up various fish and such. Either way, it tastes pretty good.

Now is a good time to add wakame if that’s your thing, and after a few more minutes, add the tofu, once you’ve sliced that to the size you like. I find it prudent not to cut it too small, especially with kinu tofu, so it’s still easy to retrieve from the bowl when you’re eating, and so that it doesn’t fall to pieces if it’s sat cooking for any period of time.

Keep it going for a few more minutes, by which time the daikon should be cooked and the tofu will be mixed through and then serve in a small bowl.

For those not too familiar, you can usually get two main types of tofu in the supermarkets here - kinu （絹）and momen (木綿) - named after how they’re made, being from silk and cotton sieves respectively. The kinu tofus are a bit smoother, but some prefer the more solid momen variety.

A couple of friends have commented that I use more miso-dashi than they would, and from having had a lot of miso shiru in various restaurants, that’s probably true, so you might want to reduce the amount of miso. The truth is, I like miso. I like miso ramen. I like miso onigiri.

Anyway, I thought I’d throw this simple recipe out there but it’s so simple it seems just too obvious. Any tips or family recipes always appreciated.

miso dashi

Miso Shiru Musings

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:35:49 +0000

So basically, when I woke up last Sunday morning, I was thinking about making some miso shiru. This is not a normal way to wake up. A normal way to wake up is either a) thinking about an enormous fried breakfast which somehow makes itself and then does the washing up, or b) going back to bed because it’s still technically ‘AM’.

Or both.

However, there I was wandering around the apartment thinking about miso shiru. Of course, like anything, my plan just got grander and grander.

“I’m going to grind fresh miso, make my own dashi from dead fish, recycled Gundam robots etc., make my own tofu and find clams and such on Tsukiji market to flavour. It will truly be an epic soup!! [Insert evil laugh here]”

Me

One thing I do know about my local supermarket on a Sunday AM is that it’s packed with customers over the age of 120. Hundreds of them. All buying the same things. So I decided to spend a bit more time in the planning phase.

After a cup of tea and a good sit down at the dining table, the whole thing seemed like a lot of hard work. Maybe I’d buy the dashi paste or powder and to be honest I don’t actually like clams, so what’s the point in that?

After another cup of tea and a quick game of Katamari Damashi, the ‘grinding your own miso’ thing seemed positively twentieth century - you can get very reasonable miso in a tube I’m told.

It takes a lot of time to make tofu. I remember seeing a programme on TV about it. Also, I don’t have the huge bath they had, so I’m better off just buying some.

OK. I have my plan. Just one more cup of tea, and off to the shop.

So after another quick Katamari session, I got to the supermarket, and had decided to do an all vegetable miso shiru based on the truth that I had a lot of veggies in the fridge which needed using. Potatoes, carrots and mushrooms to be exact. Also, I spied a tub of miso/dashi paste. Pre-mixed! I saw an elderly lady buy one, so I figured it must be pretty good, because I can’t quite see her allowing herself to be ridiculed by friends and family for not knowing how to make good miso shiru.

Buying the tofu proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be. Actually, it shouldn’t have been. There’s basically two types in our local supermarket - kinu and momen. They’re actually made differently, taste different, and have slightly different consistencies. I wanted momen, which should have been easy as I can read the ‘kinu’ kanji pretty easily, so I just needed to avoid it.

Actually, it was only after I bought the kinu tofu, and carried it home, that I had this epiphany. Ah well, no problem, I’ll just figure it out later.

Bottom line was I mixed the dashi/miso mix (very twenty first century I might add) with hot water for a few minutes, added my slightly pre-boiled potatoes and carrots, then a bit later the mushrooms, and then finally, a couple of minutes before serving, the slightly soft tofu. Outcome: complete success. See, I knew that was a quick, pain free idea.

No, there was no wakame. I just wasn’t in a seaweedy mood that day. Maybe next Sunday.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Paul Brown — 2006-02-13

I hate to spoil it for you after all that effort, but those nice fellas at Heinz do tomato soup in a can which involves the following preparation:

Open can (essential)
Pour contents of can into bowl or big mug
Place bowl or mug into microwave and nuke the bejeezus out of it
Drink soup
Burn skin off tongue and roof of mouth

Now THAT’S 21st century.

graham — 2006-02-13

In the old days I would agree with you. Get that Mulllllahhhgittawny soup, Nuke it in the microwave for about ten minutes or until the plastic bowl starts to go a bit wobbly, then chuck it in your mouth.

nowadays, we need healthier food like tofu and bean paste….to stick in the microwave for ten minutes until the bowl starts to wobble etc.

Times they are indeed ‘a changin’.

Miso on Nanikore

Recipe: Miso Shiru

Miso Shiru Musings

Original Comments