Miso Soup Tips

I made miso soup this morning mostly to entice my roommates into waking up early with me and going to vote.

Non-instant miso soup is so easy, it's retardulous. I used daikon chopped into thinnish rectangles, dried seaweed that I hydrated first, green onion, and tofu. But here's the basic recipe:

miso
dashi (a kind of Japanese soup stock) or any soup stock
any kind of vegetable and/or tofu

• Pour water into a pot and pour some dashi in, just enough so that it's not uber-powerful.
• When boiling (or before), add vegetables. If some take less time to cook, throw them in toward the end. For example, daikon and carrots take longer, so I put those in first, but green onion, seaweed, and tofu don't need much time to become palatable, so I put them in when the daikon or carrots are almost done.
• When veggies are done, stop the heat. Take a spoonful of miso, put it in a ladle, and add water to the ladle.
• Muck around the stuff in the ladle until the miso is not a paste, then stir the murky liquid into the general soup.
  
• Repeat adding miso until flavor intensity acheived.
  

Details: miso is fermented soybean paste, available at most stores these days but certainly at Whole Foods and Asian stores. Buy it in tubs or plastic bags. There's white, red, brown, brown rice, etc. varieties. They're all good for you. White is more creamy and light, red is a little more flavorful, brown is rich. No big deal. Store in the fridge FOREVER; I've never known miso to ever go bad.

Dashi is available at Asian stores. It's a nice touch to the soup, it's cheap, and it's easy. If you can't find an Asian grocery store, just use vegetable or chicken stock. Not as authentic, but ehh. Just pour a little in; you want a touch of a base, but you don't want to make chicken noodle miso. Also, you could always be adventurous and make your own dashi, but it involves more Asian stuff. Finally, a Japanese woman told me that the key to a good miso soup balance of flavors was that, if you are going to use vegetables only, then use the fish dashi, but if you use shrimp or any kind of seafood in your soup, use veggie dashi.

Tofu: firm or soft does not matter. (That's what she said.)

Consumption tip: When eating miso, the Japanese use chopsticks to pick out the veggies and tofu, but for the broth, they just drink out of the bowl. Put down your spoon and take a drink. (That's what she said.) You'll be glad you did.