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Miso Soup Home-Brew
Posted by Chris Lehrer on 9-30-08 in Not All Raw Fish
Everybody likes miso soup, right? Certainly everyone in Japan does—anyway, if they don’t, they’re keeping pretty quiet about it.
This soup is very, very easy to make, and it has a lot more range than you might think, since I think every single time I’ve had it in an American restaurant it has been made the same way, whereas it’s got lots of different versions in Japan.
A Little Context
Miso soup (misoshiru) is one of the absolute staples of Japanese cooking and eating, probably second only to rice as a basic thing. Even in modern, urban homes, pretty much every meal at home (breakfast and dinner, most likely, though not everyone necessarily eats at the same time) includes miso soup and rice. The other necessity is pickles (tsukemono), of which there are a bewildering variety, but these days an awful lot of people just pick these up in little packages pre-made. Some people buy instant miso soup, too, but it’s so easy it’s hardly worth it.
The most common version is the one you probably know: red miso, dashi, cubes of silk tofu, squares or strands of floating wakame seaweed, and negi (giant scallion) rings. It’s the most common, I think, because these ingredients are available year-round, pretty much anywhere in Japan.
Other kinds of miso soup include, for example, one made with little clams cooked in water; they flavor the water and make clam dashi (which really just means stock), so you don’t have to mess around with kombu and katsuo flakes, which is nice. There are also heartier versions in which you saute vegetables and a little pork, add stock, and go from there.
The other big way to vary miso soup—other than the dashi and the things you float in it—is to vary the remaining ingredient, i.e. the miso. As you may know from a post I did a couple weeks ago, there are a zillion different kinds of miso, but the usual ones you’re going to see in an American market are three different types of aka-miso (red miso), often packaged somewhat inaccurately as white (or amber, yellow, etc.) miso, red miso, and black or brown miso. They all taste somewhat different, and darkness of color doesn’t necessarily translate to intensity of flavor: the dark-brown miso you might see is intense, yes, but also quite subtle and sweet, with a much less robust and earthy flavor than the red (so-called) kind.
Variations of this kind are often a matter of regional specialty. This or that region has a local special miso, and so they use it in their local soup. And of course there’s just family preference. I should note that some of those old-fashioned local misos are pretty out there, tasting very different from the common main-line aka-miso styles, but you’re not likely to see these outside a boutique market or something like that unless there’s a huge Japanese community around.
Miso soup is such a big deal that traditionally, a new bride learns to make it from her mother-in-law, because it’s so important to her husband’s happiness that she make it the way he’s used to. Elizabeth Andoh has a charming little column about this that is well worth reading if you want to get a sense of just how important miso soup is for everyday home life in Japan.
Making Miso Soup
For a standard recipe writeup, see recipes section. But I’m going to talk you through this, because what matters in miso soup isn’t really the stuff that fits neatly into recipes. This is a technique, and once you understand it all variations are straightforward.
The basic principles are simple. You have stock, stuff that has to be cooked (tofu, wakame, clams, etc.), miso, and stuff that just barely cooks (scallion rings, shiso leaves, bannou-negi which are like chives, etc.). A serving is about 1/3 cup stock, about the same volume of cooked stuff, a tablespoon or so of miso, and a sprinkling of the just-cooked garnishes.
The process is straightforward: First, you cook what needs to be cooked in the stock until it’s done. Second, you dissolve the miso in the stock, either by working it through a basket strainer or by ladling out liquid and stirring it with miso, then pouring it all back. Third, you garnish with the garnishes.
The only remotely tricky part has to do with heat. Silk tofu starts to break down if boiled rapidly, so once it’s gone in you don’t let the stock boil hard; as a general rule, you simmer the cooked stuff rather than boil it as such. Similarly, miso takes on a dramatically different character when cooked hard, so once it’s in the soup you don’t let it come above a light simmer. Other than that, this is brainless. It takes a small amount of attention when you’re adding the miso, but as soon as you’ve done that it’s done: you sprinkle on the garnishes and start ladling almost instantly.
So let’s say you want to do the most common version, the one you get in Japanese restaurants in America: dashi, silk tofu, wakame, red miso, and scallion rings.
Start by reconstituting the wakame, which normally involves dropping it in hot tap water for 10 minutes or so — follow the package directions, because they’re not all the same. Put a cake of silk tofu on a few paper towels and very gently slice it into roughly 1" cubes. Slice the scallion or negi into very thin rounds.
For each serving, put 1/3 cup or so dashi in the saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil, then add the tofu and wakame and cook at a medium simmer for a minute or so until cooked: when the wakame seems tender, it’s ready. Put 1 Tb or more red miso into a basket strainer and dunk it into the soup. Stir vigorously inside the strainer to dissolve; some white flecks may appear in the strainer, which are bits of rice — once the miso is dissolved, you can chuck these or add them to the soup. Do not let the soup come to a strong simmer as you do this. Sprinkle on the negi, shut off heat, wait 15 seconds to cook the negi a hair, and then ladle into individual (preferably wooden) bowls.
Leftovers can sit in the pot for breakfast: reheat very gently, just to a bare simmer. Serve with rice, pickles, and broiled salmon for an ultra-traditional Japanese breakfast. Don’t talk to me about serving nattō instead of the salmon.
Potential Difficulties
You may have trouble with the dashi, something I discussed in my first column on oyako donburi. As I said there, I think you’re better off getting high-quality instant dashi makings than trying to make it yourself from inferior ingredients, but there are legitimate disagreements on this point. Do not use powdered instant if you have another option; if you must use it, double the amount of miso — you will need to cover up the slightly chemical flavor of the powder. In this dish, however, you can probably get away with that. I don’t think it’s worth it, as good-quality instant dashi makings are not expensive and can be mail-ordered easily if need be.
If you’re making dashi from scratch, it is best to use the milder second-boil dashi. You take the makings of a batch of dashi and do it all over again, just briefly bringing everything almost to a boil then turning down the heat to very low for about 10 minutes. Turn off heat and let sit a little while. Strain. (There are better, more complex ways to do it, but chances are it’s not going to make any difference.) This makes a weaker, milder dashi. You can also just dilute full-strength dashi by about 50% (add half a cup water per cup of dashi), producing a similar result.
You may have trouble getting miso, on which see my post on miso. The dark brown kind does not make great soup, if you are expecting more or less what you’ve had in a Japanese restaurant, but it is a wonderful thing to experiment with. If you have access to a wider range of miso styles, experiment to your heart’s content, but be sure to start by trying some kind of red miso (aka miso), which is far and away the most common. True white miso is cream-colored and very subtle; true black miso is wild and earthy and very hard to describe. And then there are the odd kinds. You can also mix different kinds in whatever quantities and proportions you like. I think you are best off starting with the red-brown type of aka miso, and using about 1.5 Tb per serving, just to give you a solid baseline from which to fool around if you wish; if you can only get amber, that’s fine too.
Technique-wise, I’ve heard of people having a little trouble with the basket strainer thing, because they crush the tofu with it, and of course you might not have one anyway. In that case, the thing to do is to ladle half a cup of the hot stock out of the saucepan into a bowl that has the miso in it. Stir vigorously until the miso is smoothly dissolved, and dump the contents of the bowl back into the saucepan. It doesn’t make a lot of difference. I prefer to wash fewer bowls, and I think it’s a bit trickier to do the bowl trick when you’re making only one or two servings of soup, but it’s a pretty trivial difference.
In the end, you’re not going to have trouble with miso soup. The only real problem, if you ask me, is that you will get tired of it. Fortunately, there are lots of other kinds, other ingredients, and in general lots of fun to be had with this. So let’s get cracking.
(click here for part 2)
This soup is very, very easy to make, and it has a lot more range than you might think, since I think every single time I’ve had it in an American restaurant it has been made the same way, whereas it’s got lots of different versions in Japan.
A Little Context
Miso soup (misoshiru) is one of the absolute staples of Japanese cooking and eating, probably second only to rice as a basic thing. Even in modern, urban homes, pretty much every meal at home (breakfast and dinner, most likely, though not everyone necessarily eats at the same time) includes miso soup and rice. The other necessity is pickles (tsukemono), of which there are a bewildering variety, but these days an awful lot of people just pick these up in little packages pre-made. Some people buy instant miso soup, too, but it’s so easy it’s hardly worth it.
The most common version is the one you probably know: red miso, dashi, cubes of silk tofu, squares or strands of floating wakame seaweed, and negi (giant scallion) rings. It’s the most common, I think, because these ingredients are available year-round, pretty much anywhere in Japan.
Other kinds of miso soup include, for example, one made with little clams cooked in water; they flavor the water and make clam dashi (which really just means stock), so you don’t have to mess around with kombu and katsuo flakes, which is nice. There are also heartier versions in which you saute vegetables and a little pork, add stock, and go from there.
The other big way to vary miso soup—other than the dashi and the things you float in it—is to vary the remaining ingredient, i.e. the miso. As you may know from a post I did a couple weeks ago, there are a zillion different kinds of miso, but the usual ones you’re going to see in an American market are three different types of aka-miso (red miso), often packaged somewhat inaccurately as white (or amber, yellow, etc.) miso, red miso, and black or brown miso. They all taste somewhat different, and darkness of color doesn’t necessarily translate to intensity of flavor: the dark-brown miso you might see is intense, yes, but also quite subtle and sweet, with a much less robust and earthy flavor than the red (so-called) kind.
Variations of this kind are often a matter of regional specialty. This or that region has a local special miso, and so they use it in their local soup. And of course there’s just family preference. I should note that some of those old-fashioned local misos are pretty out there, tasting very different from the common main-line aka-miso styles, but you’re not likely to see these outside a boutique market or something like that unless there’s a huge Japanese community around.
Miso soup is such a big deal that traditionally, a new bride learns to make it from her mother-in-law, because it’s so important to her husband’s happiness that she make it the way he’s used to. Elizabeth Andoh has a charming little column about this that is well worth reading if you want to get a sense of just how important miso soup is for everyday home life in Japan.
Making Miso Soup
For a standard recipe writeup, see recipes section. But I’m going to talk you through this, because what matters in miso soup isn’t really the stuff that fits neatly into recipes. This is a technique, and once you understand it all variations are straightforward.
The basic principles are simple. You have stock, stuff that has to be cooked (tofu, wakame, clams, etc.), miso, and stuff that just barely cooks (scallion rings, shiso leaves, bannou-negi which are like chives, etc.). A serving is about 1/3 cup stock, about the same volume of cooked stuff, a tablespoon or so of miso, and a sprinkling of the just-cooked garnishes.
The process is straightforward: First, you cook what needs to be cooked in the stock until it’s done. Second, you dissolve the miso in the stock, either by working it through a basket strainer or by ladling out liquid and stirring it with miso, then pouring it all back. Third, you garnish with the garnishes.
The only remotely tricky part has to do with heat. Silk tofu starts to break down if boiled rapidly, so once it’s gone in you don’t let the stock boil hard; as a general rule, you simmer the cooked stuff rather than boil it as such. Similarly, miso takes on a dramatically different character when cooked hard, so once it’s in the soup you don’t let it come above a light simmer. Other than that, this is brainless. It takes a small amount of attention when you’re adding the miso, but as soon as you’ve done that it’s done: you sprinkle on the garnishes and start ladling almost instantly.
So let’s say you want to do the most common version, the one you get in Japanese restaurants in America: dashi, silk tofu, wakame, red miso, and scallion rings.
Start by reconstituting the wakame, which normally involves dropping it in hot tap water for 10 minutes or so — follow the package directions, because they’re not all the same. Put a cake of silk tofu on a few paper towels and very gently slice it into roughly 1" cubes. Slice the scallion or negi into very thin rounds.
For each serving, put 1/3 cup or so dashi in the saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil, then add the tofu and wakame and cook at a medium simmer for a minute or so until cooked: when the wakame seems tender, it’s ready. Put 1 Tb or more red miso into a basket strainer and dunk it into the soup. Stir vigorously inside the strainer to dissolve; some white flecks may appear in the strainer, which are bits of rice — once the miso is dissolved, you can chuck these or add them to the soup. Do not let the soup come to a strong simmer as you do this. Sprinkle on the negi, shut off heat, wait 15 seconds to cook the negi a hair, and then ladle into individual (preferably wooden) bowls.
Leftovers can sit in the pot for breakfast: reheat very gently, just to a bare simmer. Serve with rice, pickles, and broiled salmon for an ultra-traditional Japanese breakfast. Don’t talk to me about serving nattō instead of the salmon.
Potential Difficulties
You may have trouble with the dashi, something I discussed in my first column on oyako donburi. As I said there, I think you’re better off getting high-quality instant dashi makings than trying to make it yourself from inferior ingredients, but there are legitimate disagreements on this point. Do not use powdered instant if you have another option; if you must use it, double the amount of miso — you will need to cover up the slightly chemical flavor of the powder. In this dish, however, you can probably get away with that. I don’t think it’s worth it, as good-quality instant dashi makings are not expensive and can be mail-ordered easily if need be.
If you’re making dashi from scratch, it is best to use the milder second-boil dashi. You take the makings of a batch of dashi and do it all over again, just briefly bringing everything almost to a boil then turning down the heat to very low for about 10 minutes. Turn off heat and let sit a little while. Strain. (There are better, more complex ways to do it, but chances are it’s not going to make any difference.) This makes a weaker, milder dashi. You can also just dilute full-strength dashi by about 50% (add half a cup water per cup of dashi), producing a similar result.
You may have trouble getting miso, on which see my post on miso. The dark brown kind does not make great soup, if you are expecting more or less what you’ve had in a Japanese restaurant, but it is a wonderful thing to experiment with. If you have access to a wider range of miso styles, experiment to your heart’s content, but be sure to start by trying some kind of red miso (aka miso), which is far and away the most common. True white miso is cream-colored and very subtle; true black miso is wild and earthy and very hard to describe. And then there are the odd kinds. You can also mix different kinds in whatever quantities and proportions you like. I think you are best off starting with the red-brown type of aka miso, and using about 1.5 Tb per serving, just to give you a solid baseline from which to fool around if you wish; if you can only get amber, that’s fine too.
Technique-wise, I’ve heard of people having a little trouble with the basket strainer thing, because they crush the tofu with it, and of course you might not have one anyway. In that case, the thing to do is to ladle half a cup of the hot stock out of the saucepan into a bowl that has the miso in it. Stir vigorously until the miso is smoothly dissolved, and dump the contents of the bowl back into the saucepan. It doesn’t make a lot of difference. I prefer to wash fewer bowls, and I think it’s a bit trickier to do the bowl trick when you’re making only one or two servings of soup, but it’s a pretty trivial difference.
In the end, you’re not going to have trouble with miso soup. The only real problem, if you ask me, is that you will get tired of it. Fortunately, there are lots of other kinds, other ingredients, and in general lots of fun to be had with this. So let’s get cracking.
(click here for part 2)
http://www.louisvuitton4love.com/louis-vuitton-delightful-monogram-mm-m40353-p-1249.html