Learn to Make Japanese Miso Soup

If you have been eating at Japanese restaurants, you may have wondered how to duplicate the tasty and healthy Miso Soup you have enjoyed there. Here is the proper way to make it as I learned from a great Japanese cook.

Learn to Make Japanese Miso Soup

Learn to Make Japanese Miso Soup

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Learn to Make Japanese Miso Soup

Learn to Make Japanese Miso Soup

You can now have this delicious hot soup in your home any time you want. You will most likely find that it tastes as good or better than at your favorite restaurant.

First you have to locate the right ingredients and that will require going to the right grocery store. You need to look up where the closest Oriental Grocery or Japanese Grocery is located.

When you visit this establishMent, go to the refrigerated section and purchase a small tub of Miso. There should be a selection of different types of Miso paste. If possible try to buy a light or medium colored variety for your first soup. It should cost about five Dollars and have about a half pound of Miso paste in it. This will keep you in Miso soup for a while and you will also find that Miso is great for other recipes in the future.

Find fresh Tofu in the refrigerated area also and buy a small tub. I usually buy the firm variety so that it does not crumble while in the soup. A nice thing about making Miso soup is that the enTire recipe is really up to your taste and each cook has there own variables of each ingredient.

You also need to find or ask for "Negi". If that sounds strange, don't worry, that means scallion or green onion in Japanese. Buy a small bunchof Negi. You also need some "Wakame". Wakame is the tasty green leaf vegetable that you may have noticed before in Miso soup. It is a special sea vegetable, seaweed, if you will. Wakame can either be bought dried in a small couple oz packet, alternately you can purchase a small plastic package of about a quarter pound of salted fresh Wakame. Now you should find a small package of fresh Shiitake mushrooms.

Finally buy some "Dashi", this can come in teabags that contain the Dashi. It is a very mild and tasty Fish stock flavoring. There usually is a big selection of types so you can ask someone at the grocery store which one they recomMend.

If you read my article on making Japanese style rice, you could also pick up the correct rice to make that you caneat with your soup.

So, to make Miso Soup, here is your list of ingredients to buy and a description of each:

Miso Soybean paste pastes--tea bags--Dashi soup stock in teabag form. --Wakame seaweed, either dried or salted fresh is okNegi-scallion-Shiitake-mushroomTofu soybean curd--this is an excellent source of protein, by the way.Resist the urge to buy anything else right now because it is time to go home and make your first real Misosoup!

When you are home, take out your Wakame and soak it in a bowl of water, you only need a teaspoon offlakes or if you have the salted variety take about a six inch strand. The quantities are to your taste. Completely wash out the salt in the fresh strand of Wakame and then put it in a fresh bowl of water to soak while you are Cooking. Sometimes it actually is better to soak salted Wakame for an hour or longer so that it is more tender. I usually keep a soaked Supply in my refrigerator and make more every few days. If you are short on time, cut the washed fresh salted Wakame into one inch pieces and boil it in the Dashi you are making as this works nicely to tenderize the Wakame.

Wash a few Shiitake mushrooms with water and discard the tough stems. Slice each mushroom into quarter inch strips. For the soup, the object is to boil a pot of water with a Dashi bag. Figures abouta quart for 2 people but this is really something you can do by eye. Take your Shiitake mushrooms and add them to the soup. Boil gently 5 or 10 minutes to cook the mushrooms. Bring down the heat to a gentle simmer and add a couple tablespoons of Miso paste as per your taste. Remember how it tasted at the restaurant, use this as your guide to deciding how much to add Miso . You will have to stir the Miso paste a bit to dissolve it. A good trick to help dissolve the Miso is to put it into a strainer and rub it through into the soup. Taste your soup and make adjustMents to the amount Miso as needed. Do not be concerned over ingredient amounts, just taste as you go and make your soup to your own taste.

OK, let the> Soup continue to simmer gently and if you are soaking Wakame, drain it and slice it into one inch pieces. Put the Wakame in the soup and let it cook about 5 minutes.

Take about half the tub of Tofu and cut it into cubes. I always think it is fun to cube Tofu! Put the Tofu cubes into the soup and let it heat up for a minute or two but do not boil, just let it heat the Tofu.

Next, find your "Negi, do you remember what that is? Clean one stalk and with a very sharp knife and cutting board, finely slice it crosswise circle and put the Negi (scallion) aside for later.

That's it! You are done!

Serve the soup into small bowls and put some of the fresh uncooked Negi on the top of the soup right before you eat it.

I am now going to teachyou one more useful Japanese word. If you remember it, you can definitely feel good saying it while you are eating something that is particularly wonderful.

Oishii!

You can pronounce it like this: Oyy Shee!

It means delicious!

Learn to Make Japanese Miso Soup

Simple Soup Maker's Kitchen

Let's solve this mystery once and for all. Don't let those gourmets fool you. It really doesn't take a lot of fancy cookware or specialty items to make soup. In fact soup is ideal everyday fare, simple to make, and accessible to ANY budget. Have you ever heard of Stone Soup? It's a wonderful story that tells how simple soup really is. In fact soup evolved as a catch-all for leftover bits of this and that. Now you can get pretty fancy if you want to with soup - but we're going to stick to the simple stuff here - everyday fare for everyday folks.

Pots and Pans
You could get away with just one good sized soup pot (6-8 quart). Of course stainless steel is best or even cast iron will do. You want to stay away from pans containing aluminum or teflon as they've been associated with the developMent of Alzheimers and other brain disorders. I'd say the full extent of pots I use for soup includes a small pot (2 quart) for quick noodle soups or a roux, a medium pot 4 1/2 quart, and a large pot 6 quart - depending on who's coming to dinner, how much my ingredients will swell, and if I'm Cooking for a week or a day; a skillet for sautéing (but you could do it right in the pot and keep all the yummy flavors in one place).

A crock pot is great to have for those long winter days if you have to go to work or go ski or "board the rad pow", and want to have a pot of soup when you get home. I've broken crock pots and readily picked up a new one at the thrift store! So budget shouldn't be a limiting factor here...after all, it's reuse before recycle, right?

Cutting Gear
Have you ever noticed, you can have a drawer full of knives, but you always grab that favorite one? All the years I've been Food preparing and Cooking (and it's been many) I still have my favorite knife that has gone with me everywhere. You need something good to cut veggies without it being too much work. It may be a paring knife for you or something bigger. Just always be very careful and use a knife you're comfortable with. I have one paring knife I like, on medium serrated, and a large that I adore (family heirloom) that I always have to Watch my fingers with and pay attention, but I love how it cuts up my veggies for soup and salads.

Bottom line - use a knife you like, sharpen now and then, pay close attention when cutting!

Refrigerator - Produce
We are so lucky to have refrigeration, provides many options for keeping and enjoying a wide variety of produce. The baseline of my soups always begin with the many varieties of onions, potatoes, garlic, ginger and carrots. Some of these may not need to be refrigerated based on your climate and home temperature. See how they are stored at the market and do something similar.

Among the greens I always bring home cilantro, parsley and spinach; I love having them in something every day. Beyond these basics you can get into the fancier veggies such as mushrooms, kale, collards, squash, cabbages (several kinds), tomatoes, parsnips, turnips, beets...and more...

Pantry - Grains, Beans, Pasta, Herbs, Oil, Spices
In your pantry keep a Supply of the Super Immunity herbs and spices you like best. I order mine by the pound through my local co-op - you'll have to figure out your best resources and use those. Most health Food stores have a good bulk herb and spices section (fresher and better on cost/environMent than small jars).

Get yourself a Supply of beans and grains you like. Rice, quinoa and amaranth are some of my favorite grains to add to soup. I've found most dry beans even at the supermarket will sprout when soaked, so you can use those, or go to the natural food store and get organic (better for you and the Earth). Lentils, black beans (same benefits as red wine), and pintos are some of our favorites around here; we always soak at least 12 hours to start the sprouting process, drain the water (important), then add fresh water and cook 6-8 hrs to make a great soup, with greatly reduced digestive stress.

Keep some noodles in your pantry - rice noodles are a nice way to stay away from wheat which many people are allergic to (because there's so much of it in our culture). But find whatever you like among the smaller sized Pastas, and keep them around for quick soups. Even the ramen packets without msg, can be used as a base and add fresh veggies, for healthy 'Fast food'.

Olive oil and natural soy sauce will get you started on a good soup base and you can expand your seasonings from there as you learn about additional ingredients such as miso and Umeboshi plum vinegar.

Well, if you start out by stocking your kitchen as described above, you'll be well-prepared to make yourself quite a few pots of soup. Now take action, keep learning, discover what you like, and feed yourself and those you love in a way that protects their health and immunity.

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Chinese Cooking Recipes - Ramen and La Mian - What the Difference is and Why It's So Popular

I am sure most of us have heard of raMen but did you know it started as la mian in Chinese Cooking recipes? RaMen is that small packet of deep fried noodles that has been dried and packaged as a type of soup in our grocery store. It is also the main staple of many college kids diet.

La Mian Origins
There are many recipes for Chinese noodles. La mian literally translates into pulling noodles in Chinese and has one significant difference to raMen. La mian noodles are pulled and stretched to form a noodle. La mian is a staple of Chinese Food and used very frequently in their dishes.

RaMen Origins
Ramen is a Japanese version of la mian that has been changed from the original Chinese Cooking recipes for the Japanese pallet. The dish consists of noodles but they are cut rather than pulled and the broth they sit in has a different flavor than the Chinese broths.

Chinese Soups
The Chinese Cooking recipes for la mian usually calls for beef or mutton-flavored soups. These soups, unlike the Japanese, can be compared to a generic soup. The noodles, vegetables and other flavorings are what create the dish and can vary greatly between different Chinese cooking recipes.

Japanese Soups
Japanese soups are typically made from chicken or Pork stocks. Japanese soups fall into one of four main categories.

Shio - Salt soup
Tonkotsu - Pork bone soup
Shoyu - A combination of chicken and vegetable stock
Miso - Created with fermenting rice, barley, soybeans with salt and a particular type of fungus.

Why It's So Popular
La mien was just as popular as every other Chinese noodle recipe because the Chinese have so many recipes that include many different types of noodles. It became a street Food and migrated to Japan where they loved the Chinese cooking recipes. Ramen was born for speed and convenience as the Japanese adapted the noodle recipe.

More Noodle Recipes

miso soup packets

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