Miso Soup with Tofu
The clear, umami-rich five minutes of everyday Japanese cooking, featuring tofu and wakame.
- Preparation
- 5 min
- Cook/bake time
- 10 min
- Total
- 15 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Calories
The clear, umami-rich five minutes of everyday Japanese cooking, featuring tofu and wakame. The crucial point is that miso must never boil, because heat destroys its delicate aroma and live cultures. This is a soup that accompanies almost every meal in Japan and is still ready in minutes.
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Soak the wakame
Place the dried wakame in a bowl of cold water and let them soak for five minutes. They multiply their volume surprisingly well, so one teaspoon per person is truly enough. Drain them afterwards and squeeze them out gently.
- 2
Heat the dashi
Heat the dashi broth in a pot until it is steaming slightly but not quite boiling. If you are making dashi yourself, steep a piece of kombu seaweed in cold water for thirty minutes and then heat it slowly, removing it just before boiling, and let bonito flakes steep for two minutes.
- 3
Add tofu and wakame
Add the tofu cubes and the drained wakame to the hot broth and let them steep for two minutes so they are warmed through. Stir very gently with a spoon, because silken tofu is very delicate and will otherwise break apart into flakes.
- 4
Stir in the miso
Now remove the pot from the heat. Place the miso paste in a small bowl or a ladle and stir it smooth with a few spoons of the hot broth until there are no more lumps. Only then do you stir it into the pot. This order is important, because miso stirred in directly never distributes evenly.
- 5
Serve
Quickly distribute the soup among four bowls and sprinkle the spring onion rings on top. Miso soup is traditionally drunk immediately and not kept warm, because reheating it causes it to lose a significant amount of aroma and become flat in taste.
