How to make miso soup from scratch in 5 easy steps – with no need for any supermarket sachets or pre-bought stock.
I’ve always loved miso soup. Its salty broth serves as a great addition to a meal, a healthy breakfast to kick off the day and also a surprisingly effective hangover cure. Until last year, I had only eaten miso soup in restaurants or occasionally made it from supermarket-bought sachets at home. Since learning how to make it from scratch it’s become a regular staple – and one that’s really quick and easy to prepare.
In this guide I recommend adding tofu, spring onions and wakame seaweed to your miso soup, as these are my favourite things to use. But there isn’t a wrong answer here, and you can add almost any variety of vegetable you want to suit your taste. Some people add edamame beans, radishes, carrots or even noodles to make a more hearty meal. The key base is the mixture of dashi and miso that combine to form the broth.
So, the first thing to say is that you will need dashi (Japanese fish stock) to make miso soup. If you haven’t made this before, the good news is it’s really easy and you can find all the steps to make your own in this other helpful guide. Once you have your dashi to hand, you’re ready to make some delicious miso soup.
Miso soup: a step-by-step guide
The amounts shown in this guide will make enough soup for 2 people. To make more or less, simply scale the ingredients up and down proportionally.
Ingredients
- 500ml of dashi
- 1 spring onion
- 2 slices of tofu (about 1.5cm thick, cut into cubes)
- 2 teaspoons of wakame seaweed flakes
- 2 tablespoons of miso paste (ideally white miso)
Equipment
- A saucepan
- 2 small bowls
- Chopsticks
1. Heat up some dashi
Pour 500ml of dashi into a saucepan on medium heat. You want to bring the dashi close to boiling point, when small bubbles are starting to form.
2. Chop and add ingredients into two small bowls
While the dashi is heating up, take two small bowls and add into them any ingredients you want in your soup. I recommend chopping a spring onion into rounds (about 0.5 – 1cm thick) – with half of the spring onion going into each bowl, then cutting a couple of slices of tofu into 1.5cm squares and again adding half into each bowl.
Finish off by adding a teaspoon of dried wakame seaweed flakes into each of the bowls. If you have bought larger strips or sheets of wakame then you will need to chop or break a few pieces off. Aim for around 1cm square pieces, but you don’t need to be too precise. There’s no need to soak the wakame, as it will get rehydrated when you add the dashi and miso.
3. Mix the miso into the dashi
When you see the dashi coming to the boil, turn the heat off and add two tablespoons of miso to the liquid. Using a pair of chopsticks, stir the miso into the dashi until it’s fully mixed in and there are no clumps left.
4. Pour the liquid into the small bowls
Take the saucepan off the stove and pour half the liquid into each bowl – covering the spring onions, tofu and wakame. Give each bowl a quick mix with a pair of chopsticks.
5. Leave for a couple of minutes
To allow the wakame time to rehydrate, and to avoid scalding your tongue on hot soup, leave it for a couple of minutes. Then when you’re ready to eat, give each bowl a stir and eat your miso soup either with a spoon or drinking straight from the bowl. Enjoy!
