One of the foundations of Japanese food, miso soup can now be found all over the world.
Made from traditional Japanese flavours, miso soup is both delicious and nutritious, it’s high in protein while low in calories.
The base of traditional miso soup is a simple combination of dashi and miso. Dashi is a basic Japanese soup stock, made with dried bonito flakes, kelp, and anchovy. Dashi is used extensively in Japanese cooking.
Miso is a fermented paste created from a mixture of soya beans, sea salt, and rice koji. It’s a go-to Japanese ingredient often used in soups, marinades, glazes, and condiments.
Other ingredients, such as tofu, vegetables and seaweed, can be added, too. This combination of ingredients gives the soup a comforting, savoury flavour with a variety of textures.
While you can certainly order one from your favourite local takeaway spot, the Japanese soup is surprisingly easy to make yourself but you have to be aware of these three common mistakes.
Boiling the soup
Most people think that they need to boil their soup, but in reality, you don’t have to. It might be surprising for a lot of people, but instead of boiling your soup, you have to simmer it.
Boiling is not the right basis to cook your soup as it can easily dry the vegetables and meat that you have used in your soup and even overcook them.
The best way to cook your soup evenly is by simmering it on low flame and allowing everything to cook tenderly for better absorption of flavours. Never cook your soup on a high flame.
Most of your ingredients will end up getting overcooked and you will never get the desired flavours and consistency.
Using the wrong tofu
You have to use silken tofu. Save the extra-firm for your stir-fries. Silken tofu, which has the consistency of a thick pudding, melts into the broth, giving it body and depth.
Overcooking your veggies
If you are cooking tomatoes for tomato soup or broccolini for a wonderful, creamy bowl of broccolini-spring onion soup, then, by all means, cook those veggies down until they turn into absolute mush – you’re going to run through a blender or purée them anyway, so they don’t need to be firm.
But for any other soup – from split pea to vegetable to a hearty potato-filled stew – you want your produce to have some thickness and consistency.
You want to know what you are eating. And when you overcook your vegetables, that just isn’t possible. To avoid overcooking vegetables when making soup, always add ingredients in stages based on cooking time.
Start with root vegetables like carrots and potatoes as some of the first things you add to your pot and add more delicate items such as leafy greens nearer the end of cooking.
Cut all your ingredients into uniform sizes as well. This helps to ensure even cooking since smaller-cut items will cook faster than larger cuts.