Japanese Dashi and Miso Soup Recipe

Miso soup is a classic Japanese side dish to accompany a wide variety of meals or to serve as a appetizer before a meal. Making a good miso soup is very very easy and I found this really simple basic recipe to add a little extra something warm to a meal on a cold rainy day in Japan or as a nice appetizer for hungry guests as they wait for the main course.


To make miso soup you have to first make Dashi which is a type of soup stock/base that is used in a lot of Japanese dishes including miso soup or simmered tofu, fish or vegetables. It can also be added to vinaigrettes for salads.


This recipe for miso soup serves 2 people.

Ingredients:
3 cups water
1 ~10x10xcm sheet Kombu (type of seaweed)
2 pinches of Bonito Flakes (shaved flakes of dried fish) maybe about 1/4 -1/2 cup
1/2 cup Green Onion chopped
4 tbsp Miso paste (NOT red miso)

Primary Ingredients for Miso Soup

You can also optionally add other ingredients such as cabbage, tofu, etc. for additional substance. For vegetarian miso soup just leave out bonito flakes.

Method:
Step 1. First make dashi  by boiling water, kombu and bonito flakes.  I typically add the bonito flakes after the water is boiling with the kombu but some recipes say to add this even later and other say you should even soak the kombu before boiling. The kombu should soften completely and the water should change colour a little bit.You will be able to smell and taste when it is ready. I typically boil it on a medium heat for at least half an hour.

Step 2. You can optionally strain out the kombu and bonito flakes or leave these in. Mostly the bonito flakes are not left in and the kombu is cut into smaller pieces and left in the soup.

Step 3. Let dashi cool on a low heat and add miso paste when it is no longer boiling. Stir well.

Step 4. Serve and top with green onion and any other desired toppings.

Enjoy!

Easy Teriyaki Sauce Recipe

Here is my simple and easy teriyaki sauce recipe that actually turned out amazing:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sake
2 tsp sugar (option to replace a 1/4 cup of sake with 1/4 cup mirin instead of the sugar)
1/4 cup soy sauce
few slices of ginger (or to taste)
1 clove of garlic (or to taste)

Makes enough for cooking two chicken breasts with some sauce left for rice.

Step 1: Mix sake, soy sauce and sugar.
Step 2: Mince ginger and garlic and add into mixture.
Step 3: Cook mixture on medium heat to reduce amount of liquid a little bit (maybe 5-15 minutes). It is optional to add starch if you want to make a thicker sauce.

You can save sauce for other uses or make Teriyaki Chicken  or Teriyaki Stir-Fry with a few extra steps:

Step 4: Cook chicken in separate pan until mostly cooked through.
Step 5: Add chicken to sauce and cook while stirring and spooning the sauce over the chicken.
Step 6: Add other veggies to the pan and cook together until the liquid of sauce is mostly gone to make a stir-fry.

DONE!

A Gaijin Grocery Shopping in Japan

I really do love to cook and I was very much looking forward to going grocery shopping in Japan and finding all those unique ingredients that I would need to make Japanese food with. I imagined the adventure of looking through countless isles and finally finding that one thing I needed.

Reality was a bit different. I had no clue how to look for miso of other countless ingredients. I had no idea which of all of the sauces on the shelf were actually soy sauce. It took me incredibly long to even find salt and pepper!

I found it a bit frustrating at first but this is just part of acclimatizing to a new country where you can't read the language. Even with the language barrier everyone in Japan is extremely helpful. I frequently went to the counter asking in terrible Japanese "is this right for making ____?" and usually I was met with the person taking me around the store to find the proper ingredient since I had grabbed the wrong one.


Since then I found a lot of very helpful sites with recipes explaining what  ingredients are and what they look like in the store and advice for grocery shopping including the kanji and how to say ingredient names:
https://blog.gaijinpot.com/supermarkets-shopping-japan/

I wrongfully assumed that I could get away with making delicious Japanese foods without things like fish paste or algae but I must admit that this is a huge part of the flavor in so many of the soups. So here is my grocery shopping list of unique ingredients I use in some basic Japanese recipes:

Shoyu (Soy sauce)
Miso /Shiromiso (white fermented soybean paste)
Bonito flakes/ Katsuobushi (dried pieces of tuna)
Konbu (seaweed for making dashi)
Negi (a type of leek, you can also use green onion)
Sake (rice wine)
Mirin (sweet version of sake used for cooking)

Kombu, Miso and Bonito Flakes

Sansho (Japanese pepper)
Yuzu or other citrus fruit
Shiso (leaf herb used like basil)
Daikon (really big radish)
Katakuriko (potato starch)

At least eggs, peppers, carrots, onions, mushrooms and cabbage look the same wherever you are! I use these pretty much every day. I love the diversity of mushrooms in Japan.