An Attempt at Cooking: Miso Soup

Miso soup is one of the more iconic Japanese dishes. It is served as a side dish with many meals and is a staple of Japanese cuisine. It has a strong flavor and is best paired with other strong flavors like savory-meat centric dishes. The basis of the recipe is straight forward and has lots of room for flexibility.

Ingredients for Base

Miso Paste: about 75-80g ( This recipe uses white miso, but any paste will work )
Dashi Stock: 1 tsp
Water: 1L
Green Onions: 1 Stick

Ingredients for Contents

There are many combinations of ingredients that can be used for miso soup. This is a small list of my suggestions for what can be tossed in. A good starting point is to choose 2 from one group and 1 from the other group. Feel free to pick and choose to your liking. I will be using Seaweed, Tofu and Daikon Radish for this recipe.

Leafy Things

Seaweed * (about 2-3 Tablespoons of dry seaweed)
Spinach
Napa Cabbage

Extra Things

Tofu * (about half a block)
Daikon Radish * (about 100g)
Enoki Mushrooms
Shimeji Mushrooms

Steps

Bring the water to a light boil and add Dashi stock to the water.
Slice the daikon into sticks, and the tofu into cubes. Below are about the sizes and shapes of the cuts. From left to right, top to bottom: cubed tofu, sliced nappa cabbage, sliced daikon, enoki mushrooms, and dried seaweed.
Add the sliced daikon first into the pot. Since daikon is a bit tougher, it is good to let the daikon boil for a little longer than the other ingredients.
After about 5 minutes, add in the seaweed and tofu. Packages of dried seaweed may suggest to let the seaweed sit in a separate bowl of water before using. This is unnecessary for our purposes; just toss the dry seaweed into the pot.
After about 5 more minutes of boiling take the pot off the heat, and begin to mix/whisk in the miso paste. Miso is incredibly aromatic, so limiting the amount of heat for the miso keeps the flavor better.
Add in fresh chopped green onions to finish. Green onions will be crisp when added at the last moment.
Serve hot alongside another dish and please send me your miso soup in tupperware containers.