Japanese Soup Recipes

SOUPS

Soup is an integral part of nearly every Japanese meal. There are seemingly endless varieties of miso soups and clear soups to compliment main courses, noodle soups, as well as one-pot meal type soups that vary from region to region and family to family.

Soups can prove to be a wonderful part of your daily dining experience, and can help you along the road to greater health owing to their low-calorie and high nutritional contents.

I cannot go any further without telling you about my initial mystification concerning miso soup. I enjoyed miso soup at restaurants and at friends’ houses, but how to make it? Everyone I asked seemed to reply with the same answer, “Oh, miso soup? It’s so easy to make! Just put in dashi and miso and whatever you want.” I was left pondering, “How much dashi? How much miso? What kind of dashi? What kind of miso?” What was so simple to them, was so veiled to me.

After finally pinning down several of my friends for specifics, I now present to you….


Basic Miso Soup
Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 ½ tsp dashi powder (bonito dashi is used traditionally, but konbu dashi works as well)
4 cups water
¼ cup miso*
Your choice of ingredients (see below)

Place water and dashi powder in a pan and bring it to a boil.
Add vegetables and cook until tender.
Dissolve the miso in the broth. Do not let the miso boil.
Serve.

*A note about miso. Pretty much any miso that you find at the supermarket will be fine. There are many varieties (just like there are many varieties of wines) and only you can discover what you like best. The one thing to watch out for is that some miso comes with dashi already added. If this is the type that you buy (and that’s what I used to make my first miso soup) then you don’t need to add any dashi. It’s already mixed in at the proper balance.

Some popular combinations to add to basic miso soup:

Tofu chopped in ¼-½ inch squares, dried cut wakame seaweed. (Add shortly before serving so that the tofu does not boil.)
Shiitake mushrooms, tofu.
Kabocha squash chopped in bite-sized pieces (add at the beginning since this take a while to cook), shiitake, tofu.
Thinly sliced potatoes, thinly sliced onions.
Mixed mushrooms (i.e. shiitake, shimeji)
Bamboo shoot, wakame seaweed.
Diagonally sliced leek, tofu.
Spinach, tofu, green onions.
Create your own!

Tips for a good miso soup:

Ø Never let the miso or tofu boil
Ø Add wakame close to serving time. Wakame left a long time in the soup tends to get a bit slimy.
Ø Less is more. Keep your ingredients few. It’s not a stew, it’s a soup.
Ø If you want to make miso soup with a mushroom base, which is very delicious, soak 2 dried shiitake mushrooms in the water you will use for the soup for 30-60 minutes. Take them out, slice them, and return to the pan. The mushrooms make a nice soup base, so you can decrease the dashi to ½ tsp. Continue cooking as for basic miso soup.

Kenjin Jiru
Vegetable-chicken soup
Serves 4-6

This meal takes about ½ hour from start to serving. This soup looks more beautiful when the ingredients are chopped in uneven, but similar sized, bite-sized pieces.

Gather the following ingredients:

1 package Konbu dashi (or plain hon-dashi)
½ inch thinly sliced Ginger root
6-8 inches Burdock root (gobo) (peel, cut & soak in water for 5 minutes before adding)
4-5 inches Japanese daikon radish (peel and cut)
1 Carrot
1 Satsuma-imo (Satsuma sweet potato. Sometimes they are called Korean sweet potatoes.)
1 Potato
2 Chicken thighs or 1 large breast (remove skin and fat)
6 oz. Grey konnyaku
8 oz. Atsu-age (packaged fried tofu)
1-2 Green onions (thinly sliced)
Usukuchi soy sauce
Cooking sake

1. Put 1 cup of water per serving into a large pot. Place on a high fire on the stove.
2. Add dashi and ginger.
3. Chop and add the burdock, daikon, carrot, Satsuma-imo, potato, and chicken. As you finish chopping the ingredients one-by-one, add them to the pot. Turn down the fire to keep the soup at an even, low boil.
4. The konnyaku should be blanched before it is added. To do this, chop into pieces, then add to a small pot of water. Bring to a boil and turn it off. Set aside.
5. When the vegetables and chicken are cooked, add the drained konnyaku and atsu-age and continue cooking.
6. Add 2 tablespoons usukuchi soy sauce and 1 tablespoon cooking sake. Add more of these to adjust the flavor to your liking.
7. Place chopped green onions in deep bowls. Ladle in the soup.

Serve with plain white rice, and ume-boshi or nori.

If you are unable to get some of the above ingredients, don’t be dissuaded from making a similar soup. Use whatever ingredients you have available, such as onion, chicken, potato, carrot, etc. You could substitute bouillon for dashi, regular soy sauce for “utsukuchi” soy sauce, regular tofu for atsu-age, and just leave out the sake. You will have a delicious, low-calorie meal!

Egg Drop Soup

Ingredients:
Serves 4-6

4 cups chicken broth (You can simply make this from bouillon and water, or you can use water that has had chicken cooked in it, or water that has had chicken or turkey bones boiled in it.)
2 eggs
salt and pepper

Bring chicken broth to a boil.
Thoroughly beat 2 eggs with a whisk.
Slowly pour the eggs in a fine stream into the boiling broth.
Leave for about 10 seconds, until eggs are set.
Add salt and pepper.
Serve.


Tofu Egg Drop Soup
Serves 4

I usually make this to compliment a meal that contains boiled chicken. That way I can use the water that the chicken was boiled in (after scooping off the excess oil from the top.)

Ingredients:

4 cups chicken broth or bouillon and water
2 eggs
8 oz silken tofu (also called soft tofu)
4 scallions - finely chopped
a little salt
1 tsp. sesame oil

Bring broth to a boil.
Thoroughly whisk eggs in a large bowl.
Mash tofu with a fork and add to the eggs. Whisk together until well mixed.
Slowly pour the egg-tofu mixture into the boiling water in a thin stream.
Simmer until eggs rise to the surface.
Serve soup into 4 deep bowls.
To each bowl, add:
¼ tsp. sesame oil
a pinch salt
¼ of the cut spring onions

Serve.