Miso soup is a rich, savory, steaming hot soup typically served as side dish with a Japanese meal. It has a cloudy broth from some dashi, but primarily miso paste, and has bits of seaweed and tofu throughout. It’s usually served when you’re having rice, with other grilled, fried, or cooked food.
Japanese miso soup recipe is very simple to make, and I find it so comforting to sip on throughout my meal. This simple reciple has only a few ingredients, very easy to make at home for beginner cooks! If you cook a lot of Japanese food, you may already have these ingredients stocked.
Why miso soup is nostalgic for me
As a kid, my parents would take me every month to this local Japanese restaurant in northern California. They had a revolving sushi bar, but we always got a table because I had my eye the bento box. It came with a sweet teriyaki chicken, cabbage salad, rice, and miso soup. It was delicious and safe (for a kid’s palate!) and I’m glad my parents let me order it every time.
It had a cloudy broth, with pieces of white, silken tofu bobbing up and down with some seaweed friends. This restaurant was packed, and there would always be a wait. I’m realizing how easy and smart it was for them to have a pot of boiling miso soup to serve as quick damage control for patrons who were just seated.
Ingredients in miso soup
Miso soup is very Zen to me: simple ingredients, a calm cooking process, and satisfying to eat. Ingredients for this Japanese miso soup recipe simply include tofu, miso paste, dashi, and dried seaweed. That’s it! If you often cook Japanese food, you may have many of these ingredients in the pantry already.
Miso paste is the main flavoring component–a thick, salty, savory, and protein-rich paste made primarily of fermented soybeans. There are many wonderful varieties of miso, classified usually by their mix of grains, color and taste. You can use white miso paste for a more delicate flavor, yellow for a more fermetented paste, or red miso for a bolder taste.
In my recent trip eating my way through Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan, ranging from very affordable to very lucky to be able to afford, I came across many hot meals that served miso soup on the side. To my surprise they were all made with red miso.
When you add the miso paste to the dashi broth, make sure to keep the temperature at a low simmer to prevent killing the beneficial probiotics in the miso. A good temperature to have the broth is anywhere below 203ºF or 95ºC.
Tofu makes up the bulk of the ingredients in this soup. I prefer to add half a block of tofu (about 1/2 lb) for 4 cups of water because I love the taste and want more protein in my meal. Silken tofu is typically what you’ll find in miso soup for its smooth appearance and mouthfeel.
However, if your grocery store is out of silken or soft tofu you can grab any other firmness too.
We’ll use dried seaweed, or wakame. This adds a slight oceany aroma, a bit of umami to the broth, and a subtle chew. It only takes a few minutes to hydrate–look how much these guys expand after soaking less than a minute!
Make sure you get the bag of small, thick, dried seaweed you can shake around and it sounds like chips. Do not get the flattened, roasted sheets used for hand rolls!
Miso soup is made with dashi, a fish broth made from kombu and bonito flakes. Some miso even has dashi in it. Miso paste itself is packed with so much flavor that you can swap the dashi for other flavors, essentially making a vegan dashi if you wanted.
We’ll use instant dashi in this recipe, which are granules you just dissolve in water. These are potent granules that come in a small jar the size of a toothpick jar. Or if you don’t need to stock up on this, you can buy the smaller packets of dashi granules.
How to easily dissolve miso paste
Mixing in thick miso paste into a liquid can be quite annoying. To make the process easier, I use a small strainer and a spoon. Bring the heat to low, lower the strainer into the broth, and spoon the miso paste onto the strainer. Press the spoon and miso paste into the strainer and mix. Once the paste is dissolved, swirl and stir the strainer around the broth to remove any remnants of miso paste.
Refrigeration and reheating
Miso soup is so un-fussy that once you dial in how many servings you like to eat at at time, it’s easy to cook just enough soup without any leftovers. However, if you have too much soup, transfer to a glass food storage container until it fully cools, then transfer to the fridge where it will stay fresh for a few days.
When you’re ready for a quick bowl of soup portion some out and it heats up quickly on the stove or in the microwave.
Easy Japanese Miso Soup w/ Silken Tofu
Ingredients
Seaweed
- 2 c boiling water
- 2 tbsp wakame (dried seaweed)
Broth
- 4 c water
- 2 tsp dashi granules
- 1/2 lb silken tofu drained and diced
- 3 tbsp miso red or white
- 1/4 cup scallions thinly sliced
Instructions
- Add 2 c boiling water (I like using an electric kettle) to 2 tbsp wakame and stir for 10 seconds to make sure all the pieces can hydrate without sticking together. When in doubt, add more water so there's more room for the seaweed to spread out and evenly hydrate.
- Let it soak for about 3 minutes until fully hydrated, then strain, and set aside.
- Pour 4 c water into a medium pot, add 2 tsp dashi granules and bring to a boil on high heat.
- Once the pot is boiling, reduce heat to medium-high, add 1/2 lb silken tofu and all the rehydrated seaweed. Gently stir and wait until the pot just reaches a boil, then turn off the heat.
- Add 3 tbsp miso to a strainer and lower it into the pot. Use a spoon to mix the miso into the broth. The strainer helps you dissolve the miso without having to chase it around the pot, and without breaking any tofu. You can also do this in a ladle, or a bowl on the side using a scoop of the broth in the pot.
- Scoop out into bowls, garnishing each bowl with a big pinch of scallions just before serving.
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I know, can you imagine life without yelp or tripadvisor? I wouldn’t know where to start!
I love the photo you took of this soup, the light is beautiful and brings out the texture perfectly. Nicely done! Also, I just nominated you for the Liebster award, if you are interested in participating! 🙂
I feel lost as it is even with Yelp, hehe. Thanks Nicole!
Hi Huy,
Could you let me know where to get these ingredients? My daughters would love these soup!!
Thanks
tl
Hey Troy, I got all of this at a Japanese market. Sometimes general Asian ones carry it all too. If you don’t have one nearby, you can find the dried stuff like wakame and dashi granules online (I like Amazon). They also sell the miso paste there, but that’s something that needs refrigeration so I dunno abut that one.