8 Recommended Ingredients for Homemade Miso Soup
Do you like Japanese cuisine? Japanese miso soup is one which you can easily cook at home even you live outside of Japan. Here is its recipe and recommended ingredients that are most likely available in your country!
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Do you like Japanese food?
Do you like Japanese food? If you do, you should definitely try cooking Japanese food at home! Some dishes you eat at Japanese restaurant are easy to make. The most basic Japanese soup, miso soup, is one of them.
You only need to get two ingredients at an Asian supermarket
The only thing you need to do is to go to an Asian supermarket and to get two quintessential Japanese seasonings there.
1. Miso
The first seasoning is miso. Miso is used in other Asian cuisines such as Chinese and Korean. Take care to buy Japanese miso, because Korean miso is different and often contains pepper.
2. Dashi powder
The second seasoning for miso soup is “dashi powder”. You can consider it a powdered Japanese fish bouillon. It's one of the ingredients that a prpoer Japanese kitchen always has stocked.
Let's cook!
Did you get miso and dashi powder? Then you're ready. Let's cook a Japanese home meal!
1. Boil water.
2. Add your preferred ingredients (vegetables, etc) and boil until they're soft to your liking.
3. Add dashi powder.
4. Add miso. (*Make sure to stir a little so the miso paste is well dissolved. )
And here is its recommended ingredients that are most likely available in your country!
1. Green onion / onion
Both green onion and onion are very popular ingredients for miso soup in Japan. Their sweetness goes well with the salty miso.
2. Eggplant
How do you normally cook eggplant? Discover a new way of cooking with miso!
3. Potato
This is one of the ways Japanese people eat potato. Not mashed nor grilled, but cut roughly and boiled.
4. Mushroom
What kind of mushrooms are available in your country? The most common mushrooms used in miso soup in Japan are shimeji, enoki, shiitake, and eringi. You might not able to get them in your country or they might be very expensive because they're imported. But don't worry! You can use any kind of mushroom you like.
From the upper left to right, these are enoki (the small white ones), shimeji (left), shiitake (the biggest ones), and eringi.
5. Tofu
Even if you never eat tofu, you should try it in your miso soup. It's the most standard ingredient.
6. Sliced pork (or bacon)
To make miso soup a little heavier, Japanese people add sliced pork. Miso soup with pork is called "tonjiru". The pork fat also makes the soup taste milder.
7. Cheese
Cheese in miso soup. Surprised? This is not a common recipe in Japan, but some young women like this style of miso soup. You can add mozzarella cheese, tomato, basil, and top it off with black pepper. Actually, miso and cheese or other dairy products go together very well. You should try it!
8. Soy milk
This is not that common, but miso soup with soy milk is getting popular among people preoccupied with healthy food. You can add soy milk after all the other steps are done. You might like its mild taste.
The information in this article is accurate at the time of publication.
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