There are many ways to use miso in everyday cooking.
Baker and blogger Aran Goyoaga adds miso to cake batter in her newest cookbook, “Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple.” In “Greenfeast: Autumn, Winter,” cookbook author Nigel Slater uses miso as a crunchy coating for sauteed Brussels sprouts. In their book, “Ideas in Food,” chefs Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa augment pasta dough with miso. The fermented paste, an essential ingredient in Japanese cooking, has been used as a cheese-y cheat and fast marinade, in dressings and sauces, braises and roasts.
Indeed, it’s “a seasoning powerhouse with tons of range,” as my colleague Aaron Hutcherson wrote in his recent guide to miso.
But to appreciate miso in perhaps its purest expression, consider miso soup.
Sipped out of a small bowl, misoshiru is an essential part of many Japanese meals.
At its most basic, it consists of miso stirred into hot broth, at a ratio of 1 tablespoon of miso to 1 cup of broth. Because the saltiness of miso can vary significantly, Sokono Sakai, instructor and author of “Japanese Home Cooking,” notes that cooks should adjust the ratio to their tastes.
The broth is traditionally dashi, a simple stock, and the simplest dashi is made by simmering a strip of kombu, a type of kelp, in water. There are, of course, many types of dashi; it can be made from bones, vegetable trimmings, mushrooms, herbs or fermented fish. The recipe below is for a common dashi made from kombu and bonito flakes, shavings from a block of cooked, smoked, dried and pressed bonito, or skipjack tuna. Together, the kombu and bonito add richness and an oceanic minerality to the clear broth.
Once the dashi is ready, other ingredients may be added, either precooked or to cook in the broth: tiny prawns, cubes of silken tofu, clams, mushrooms, greens, cabbage, squash, potatoes or other root vegetables, eggs, noodles, citrus zest, scallions.
Keep seasonality and simplicity in mind when you decide what to add to your miso soup. It’s meant to “whet your appetite, and that first sip will bring you the taste of the season,” Sakai writes.
A summery miso soup might feature tomatoes and corn; in the winter, dried mushrooms and root vegetables could be added.
The last step is the most important: With the dashi just warm — but never boiling — miso is added. Instantly, the broth turns cloudy and creamy. But delicious secrets hide below its murky surface. In the simplest miso soup, the miso’s nutty umami shines. In variations with many additions, the miso provides a well-lit stage, a bold backdrop to whatever goodness the season may bring.
Source: The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2021/12/21/miso-soup-recipe-adaptable-dashi/
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