Basic Miso Soup

For about 4 servings, you need:

* 4 cups of basic dashi stock (see below)
* 1/3 - 1/2 cup of miso
* gu or extra ingredients (see note below)

Heat up the dashi if it's cooled. Simmer any hard ingredients, such as potatoes or daikon radish until tender.

Add any ingredients that don't need any cooking, such as wakame seaweed or tofu.

Take the miso in a ladle, and add a little bit of the hot stock, Mix the miso and stock together in the ladle with a chopstick until the miso is dissolved. This step ensures that there will be no lumps. (Go easy on the miso amount at first, and taste. If you need to add more you can.)

Dissolve the miso mixture in the soup. Don't let it boil or the flavor will dissipate. Serve immediately.

Here are some easy ingredients combinations, or gu, that you can put in the miso soup:

* Cubed tofu and presoaked wakame seaweed cut into small pieces. (A very easy to handle brand of wakame is "Fueru Wakame-chan", available in Japanese or Asian food stores. It comes in precut form in little pouches. Wakame can also be used in seaweed salad. Soak it briefly before using - oversoaking makes it slimy.
Hint: to cube tofu so that it doesn't fall apart, cut it up on a wet chopping board and slide it in the pan slowly, or else cut it up on the palm of your hand.
* Cubed potatoes (simmered in the soup until tender) and wakame. This is one of my favorites in the cold months.
* Julienned daikon radish, simmered until tender.
* Julienned cabbage, simmered until tender.
* Sliced button or shiitake mushrooms, or canned nameko mushrooms., with tofu and some chopped green onion added just before serving.



Vegetarian / Vegan dashi (Japanese stock)

Mizu dashi (water dashi) with kombu
My preference is for a simple kombu based stock, which can be made quite easily by soaking a piece of good quality kombu in water in a closed container overnight in the fridge. Put about a 30cm / 12 inch long piece of kombu in about 2 litres (8 cups) of filtered water. This is more kombu than for the regular kombu and katsuobushi stock, since the kombu has to produce all the umami on its own. If you don’t have time to soak it overnight, you can soak it for a minimum of half an hour at room temperature.

To use, bring the dashi up to a simmer (not a full boil), then take out the kombu. This produces a light colored, subtly flavored dashi. The soaked kombu can be cooked further until soft, and used in stewed dishes and the like.

Dashi using shiitake mushrooms and kombu
If the kombu dashi is too subtle for you, you can try tossing in a couple of good quality dried (never fresh) shiitake mushrooms in the water. This needs to be soaked for at least a couple of hours, or until the shiitake are quite soft. This will produce a light brown colored dashi with an assertive shiitake flavor, which is especially suitable for dishes that will include the shiitake. The soaked shiitake can be used in your dish.

Saving the soaking liquid from shiitake mushrooms
Finally, if you are using shiitake mushrooms for a dish and reconstituting them anyway, save the soaking liquid to use as dashi in the future. I keep the cut off hard stems in it to extract a bit more flavor. It will keep for a few days in the fridge, or can be frozen. (I freeze it in small ziplock bags, laid flat.)