Miso soup – Misoshiru

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 600 ml water
• 1 tsp dashi powder, alternatively a little (!) vegetable stock powder
• 3 tbsp miso paste (available in various flavors at Asian or organic stores)
• 1 spring onion(s), cut into thin rings
• e.g. silken tofu
• e.g. potato(s)
• e.g. carrot(s)
• n. B. Radish(s), thinly sliced
• n. B. soybean seedlings
• n. B. Onion(s), diced
• e.g. Wakame (seaweed)

Instructions

Working time approx. 10 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 15 minutes; Total time approx. 25 minutes

Bring water to a boil, stir in the dashi powder. Pour the miso into a small bowl and stir in a little dashi broth until smooth. (Important! Miso tends to lump if added directly to the broth! It’s best to stir it with a whisk in a separate bowl or—in true Japanese style—put the miso in a ladle and gradually add more broth while stirring.) Then bring the broth and miso paste back to a boil. Depending on your ingredients, add the tofu, diced potatoes, carrots, radish, and bean sprouts and cook briefly. Then ladle the soup into small bowls, into which you’ve previously added the spring onion rings. Note: Miso soup is eaten with almost every meal and is an essential part of Japanese cuisine (but *not* as an appetizer, but rather as a main course—our menu is unknown in Japanese cuisine)! You often read that dashi broth is laboriously made from konbu (seaweed) and tuna flakes. That’s certainly a possibility. But why should I go to any more trouble than the average Japanese housewife, who naturally uses ready-made dashi powder.