What is Miso Soup?
Miso Soup or Misoshiru (味噌汁) is a traditional Japanese soup that can accompany a bowl of rice for any meal of the day; however, it's a staple of Japanese breakfasts. It's made with dashi stock, miso paste, and solid ingredients such as vegetables, tofu, and dried seaweed, and I've got three different miso soup recipes to show you using three types of miso.
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Miso Soup Ingredients
Dashi
I see a lot of recipes for Miso Soup out there using water as the base. This is like making chicken soup with just water and salt without the chicken. Dashi is a defining component of miso soup, and along with miso and water, it's the only other required ingredient. You can read all about how to make dashi here, but it's traditionally made with a combination of kombu (kelp) and some kind of dried fish (such as katsuobushi, niboshi, or yakiago). These days there are convenient dashi packs you can use as well as instant dashi granules though these will not taste as good as making it from scratch. For plant-based dashi, you can use the kelp stock without adding dried fish or rehydrate shiitake mushrooms in it to give your vegan dashi more umami.
Miso Paste
Miso is a versatile, fermented soybean paste integral to Japanese cuisine. It's made primarily from soybeans, salt, and a culture starter known as koji (which can be propagated on rice, barley, or soybeans). Its rich, umami-laden flavor results from aging it from a few days to several years.
There are many types of miso paste, each with a unique flavor profile and color, but they can broadly be divided into three categories. These include white miso paste (Shiro Miso), which boasts a mellow sweetness and light color thanks to a shorter fermentation period and higher rice koji content. Yellow miso (Tanshokumiso) spans a broader flavor range, varying from moderately mild to robust, with a saltier profile than white miso. Lastly, red miso (Akamiso) enjoys a longer aging time, resulting in a darker hue, firmer texture, and a complex, nutty taste that's teeming with umami. Almost any variety of miso will work for miso soup, and the type that's used depends largely on the region of Japan you're from. You can learn more about the different varieties on my What is Miso post.
Vegetables
I like my miso soup to be loaded up with so many veggies that it almost looks like a stew. Vegetables not only add color, nutrients, and fiber to the soup, they also contribute to the flavor of the soup. Because I like my miso soup to have a subtle sweetness, I tend to add at least one sweeter vegetable such as carrots, onions, sweet potato, or kabocha. Here are just a few suggestions on the types of vegetables you can add.
- Root vegetables - whether you're talking carrots, sweet potatoes, onions, or burdock, root vegetables contribute both flavor and bulk to your miso soup. These tend to take the longest to cook through, which is why I like to add them at the very beginning.
- Squashes - Kabocha, butternut squash, and acorn squash are a few that come to mind right away, but zucchini and other softer squash will work as well. Add these in at the beginning as they take a while to cook through.
- Eggplants - Despite being relatively soft, eggplant requires a surprising amount of time to cook through, so I usually recommend adding them relatively early on, unless you're planning to add some very tough root vegetables.
- Green vegetables - Green veggies like green beans, okra, asparagus, broccoli shouldn't go in at the beginning, or they'll end up losing their color and getting mushy. That being said, they need more time to cook than leafy greens, so these go into the soup in somewhere in the middle.
- Leafy greens - You can use almost any leafy green ranging from spinach to cabbage, to kale, to molokhia. Unless it's something I want very tender such as cabbage, I usually put leafy greens in at the very end to preserve their color.
- Sea vegetables (a.k.a. seaweed) -In Japan, there are dozens of seaweed varieties, most of which are fair game for adding to miso soup. The most common one is dried wakame seaweed. Because seaweed cooks very quickly, it will turn to mush if you overcook it, so save it until the very end.
Tofu
Pretty much anything tofu-related is fair game here, including ganmodoki (tofu fritter), aburaage (thin fried tofu), atsuage (thick fried tofu), koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu), and of course plain old firm or silken tofu. If the tofu has been fried, I usually put it in just before adding the miso, if it has not been fried I'll add it after adding the miso. This is because raw tofu can fall apart while you're trying to get the miso to dissolve.
Garnishes
Garnishes such as scallions (green onions), aonori, and mitsuba can be added straight into the bowl when you serve the miso soup.
Vegan Miso Soup
Although most dashi includes dried fish, making miso soup plant-based is as simple as using plant-based dashi. You can head to my post about making dashi from scratch to learn about making a plant-based dashi. As for the miso, most miso is vegan-friendly, but just be sure to read the ingredient label to make sure it doesn't include any fish.
How to Make Miso Soup
Once you have all the ingredients the process for making miso soup is straightforward. The first step is to cook the hard ingredients such as carrots and potatoes in dashi broth until they're tender.
Then you just have to add the miso. I like to dissolve the miso with some of the broth in a ladle or small bowl using chopsticks before adding it to the soup. This prevents clumps of undissolved miso. Boiling the soup after the miso has been added will cause it to separate, which is why it's important to turn down the heat before you add the miso. Because different types of miso can have varying levels of salinity, it's also important to taste the soup as you add the miso mixture so you don't make it too salty.
After the miso has been added, you can add delicate things such as tofu, as well as any leafy greens or sea vegetables that you don't want to overcook.
Finally, you can stir in garnishes such as scallions and mitsuba when you serve your soup.
Serve miso soup as an accompaniment to any Japanese meal, along with other side dishes like Japanese short grain rice, Japanese pickles, Spinach Ohitashi, Soy Sauce Butter Rice, Seaweed Salad, or a green salad dressed with Sesame Dressing.
FAQ
Miso paste is made with various ingredients; some miso includes barley, which is not gluten-free. If you want to make gluten-free miso soup, look for rice miso (米味噌 - kome miso) made with rice koji, which should be gluten-free. Also, check the ingredient label to ensure it is not blended with barley or wheat.
Healthy is such a relative term, so it depends on what you consider healthy and how the soup is made. Personally, I like to load up my miso soup with tons of vegetables so that it's more like a stew. This ensures you get a great mix of textures and tastes while incorporating a wide variety of nutrients. One thing to watch out for is that miso contains a lot of salt, so be careful of how much miso you add if you are watching your sodium intake.
This is going to vary widely on what is in the miso soup. Typically it's going to run from around 80-120 calories, but if you add high-calorie ingredients like pork belly to it, the number of calories can increase significantly.
Traditional miso soup is made with dashi stock, typically made with smoked skipjack tuna flakes, so it is not vegan. That being said, it's possible to make plant-based dashi stock from kelp and shiitake mushrooms, making the miso soup both vegan and vegetarian friendly.
📖 Recipe
Units
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups dashi stock
- 75 grams kabocha pumpkin sliced
- 50 grams onion sliced
- 2 tablespoons white miso add more to taste
- mitsuba chopped, for garnish
Instructions
- Add the dashi, kabocha, and onion to a pot bring to simmer. Cook until the kabocha is tender.
- Turn down the heat and add the miso, dissolving it in a ladle first before adding it to the soup.
- Serve the white miso soup garnished with mitsuba.
Nutrition Facts
📖 Recipe
Units
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups dashi stock
- 30 grams carrots thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon miso add more to taste
- 90 grams soft tofu cubed
- 40 grams spinach chopped
Instructions
- Add the dashi and carrots to a pot and simmer until the carrots are tender.
- Turn down the heat and add the miso, dissolving it in a ladle first to avoid clumps of miso.
- Add the tofu and spinach. The miso soup is ready when the tofu has heated through.
Nutrition Facts
📖 Recipe
Units
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups dashi stock
- 75 grams eggplant
- 30 grams aburaage thin fried tofu
- 1 tablespoon miso add more to taste
- scallions chopped, for garnish
Instructions
- Add the dashi and eggplant to a pot and bring to a simmer. Cook until the eggplant is tender.
- Add the aburaage and cook until it's heated through.
- Dissolve the miso in a ladleful of soup. Serve the miso soup and garnish with scallions.
Bethy says
I love your site and your recipes, Marc!
Question: Is it true that one should never boil miso due to it losing all nutrition?
Marc Matsumoto says
Thanks Bethy! Regarding your question, miso will not lose all nutrition if you boil it. The main reason for not boiling miso is because it will cause it to separate (if you've ever seen a bowl of miso soup that's separated into a clear layer and miso layer at the bottom, the soup was likely boiled.) Another reason why it's not boiled is because boiling it will kill any live probiotics it may contain. That being said, adding it to hot soup in general (regardless of whether it is boiling or not) will probably kill the probiotics anyway, and most miso sold in the US is likely to to have been pasteurized (i.e. had all the probiotics killed), as miso with live cultures have a very short shelflife.
Barbara Raber says
I have tried 3 or 4 different miso pastes, but all of them are way too salty for my taste. I like salt but not anything over salty. Is there a way for me to tone it down or is there a brand that is not too salty. The last one I bought from a health food store and had a low sodium content but was still quite salty.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Barbara, just reduce the amount of miso you add to the soup. There are a couple of other things to consider 1) Are you using powdered Dashi stock? If so, these tend to include a lot of salt, so this could be contributing to the problem. The solution here is to make your own dashi from scratch (recipe linked above). 2) White miso has significantly less salt than other types of miso so this is another option (though you should read my headnotes above as a lot of miso brands mislabel their miso as "white miso" in the US when in fact they are yellow miso.