Miso Soup

Miso soup served at Japanese restaurants is light and brothy. It’s often dotted with small cubes of silky tofu and slippery scraps of seaweed and topped with a sprinkle of fragrant green onions. When you take a spoonful, the broth clouds as the miso is stirred up then settles until the next spoonful.

Our miso soup recipe is easy for weeknights, especially when using dashi powder as a shortcut. Once you learn the basics, this soup can be easily customized. Don’t relegate this savory soup to dinner alone, though—Japanese meals include it for breakfast, lunch and dinner! It’s one of our favorite classic homemade soup recipes and is a breeze to make.

What is miso soup?

While simple in composition, miso soup is pretty complex thanks to flavors from Japanese ingredients like miso paste and dashi. There are over 1,000 varieties of miso paste, varying by region in color, flavor and texture. In addition to being a rich source of vitamins and minerals, miso paste contains probiotics and antioxidants. Dashi is a Japanese stock made with dried kelp, kombu, and dried smoked bonito flakes, giving the pale yellow broth a subtle briny and smoky flavor. Many miso soup recipes also include tofu and seaweed.

How do you make miso soup?

Our miso soup recipe starts by making an infused stock with vegetable broth or water, dashi powder and ginger. You add tofu, dried seaweed and miso to the warm broth and simmer it for a couple of minutes to warm the tofu and rehydrate the seaweed. The soup is then served with a green onion garnish.

Miso Soup Ingredients

• Vegetable broth: We use vegetable broth to add additional flavor and slight sweetness to the broth. Avoid vegetable broths with parsley, thyme, bay leaves or other herbs and seasonings that may clash with the Japanese flavors. Use low-sodium vegetable broth to keep sodium levels in check. If you don’t have broth, use water (it’s more traditional).
• Dashi powder: Bonito-based dashi powder is a granulated form of dashi stock. Traditional dashi isn’t vegetarian (bonito is a relative of tuna and mackerel), but you can find vegetarian and vegan dashi. Hondashi is one of the most available dashi brands. Find it at Asian markets and online, and refrigerate the jar or small box after opening it.
• Miso: Miso paste, a fermented paste made with soybeans, salt and koji, is the main flavoring of miso soup. Miso paste varies by color: white (shiro), which is milder; red (aki), which has been fermented longer and has a more robust, saltier flavor; or a mix of both (awaze). Japanese markets may have a dizzying array of miso paste—look for miso with a minimum amount of ingredients—and not all are gluten-free. You can use any miso for miso soup, but start with less than the recipe calls for and slowly add more to taste. Keep leftover miso paste refrigerated.
• Gingerroot: Not all miso soup recipes include ginger, but we like the warmth and the touch of spiciness it brings to the soup. Store fresh ginger in a cool, dark place.
• Silken tofu: Tofu brings protein to this soup. You can find silken tofu in varying textures, from soft to extra-firm, but it isn’t pressed like block tofu. The result is a much softer, creamier, smoother texture. Soft pressed tofu will work in a pinch if you can’t find silken tofu. Look for silken tofu in the grocery store’s refrigerated section.
• Dried seaweed: Wakame is the slippery, briny seaweed usually found in miso soup. This recipe calls for dried wakame, not the fresh bright green wakame in seaweed salad. Wakame usually comes already cut and looks like loose tea leaves. You can throw it straight into the pot or soak it in a bowl of water for a few minutes before adding it to the soup. Nori is another dried edible seaweed (it’s most familiar as a wrapping for sushi), and you can add thinly sliced strips to this miso soup if you can’t find wakame.
• Soy sauce: This is optional, but you can add a few dashes of low-sodium soy sauce to season the soup if you’d like for an even more robust flavor.
• Green onions: Garnishing the soup with green onions adds color and a fresh oniony flavor. Smaller, slender green onions are sweeter and more delicate than larger ones.

Directions

Step 1: Make the soup base

Taste of Home

In a Dutch oven or stock pot, bring the broth, dashi and gingerroot to a simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes.

Taste of Home

Discard the ginger.

Editor’s Tip: Ginger’s skin has a lot of flavor, so peeling it off is unnecessary. To extract even more gingery flavor, cut the gingerroot into coins and smash them before adding it to the liquid. This will release more oils and juices into the stock.

Step 2: Finish the soup

Taste of Home

Add the tofu, miso and wakame.

Taste of Home

Simmer the soup for another two to three minutes. If desired, add soy sauce.

Editor’s Tip: Avoid letting the soup boil after adding the miso; boiling will kill the probiotics in the miso. Miso’s fragrance and flavor diminish as it sits, so add it right before serving. To fully dissolve the miso, you can set a fine mesh strainer into the soup and whisk the miso into the liquid through the sieve. You can also spoon some of the stock into a small bowl, whisk in the miso until dissolved, then return the miso and stock to the pot. If the soup needs more salt, add more miso or soy sauce.

Step 3: Serve and garnish

Ladle the miso soup into bowls and garnish it with green onion.

Taste of Home

Miso Soup Variations

• Make it spicy: Sprinkle some shichimi togarashi, a Japanese seven-spice mixture, into the soup with the green onions.
• Add vegetables: Customize your miso soup with vegetables of your choice. When you start the stock, add firmer vegetables like root vegetables and winter squashes to the pot and cook them until they’re tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Then, add more tender vegetables like mushrooms, snow peas or leafy greens and simmer the soup for another two to three minutes.
• Make a clam miso soup: Instead of tofu, add small clams like Manila clams or cockles to the infused stock and simmer them until they open. (Psst: Our clam stew recipe has instructions on how to clean clams.) Transfer the clams to bowls and continue with the recipe, adding the seaweed and miso to the dashi.
• Add ramen and wontons: Lose the tofu and wakame and make a mashup of miso soup, ramen noodle soup and wonton soup. If the frozen wontons are fully precooked (I like the Bibigo brand of fully cooked chicken-and-cilantro mini wontons), add them directly to the infused dashi and let them heat up before adding the miso. If the frozen wontons are raw, cook them in a separate pot of water and transfer them to individual bowls as they finish cooking. Cook the ramen separately and divvy it up among the bowls. Continue with the recipe, adding the miso to the dashi.

How to Store Miso Soup

Miso soup is at its best when fresh. Leftover soup will still be tasty, but the fragrance and flavor will fade somewhat. Store the cooled soup in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to four days.

Can you make miso soup ahead of time?

If you’d like to make miso soup ahead of time, make the infused dashi first and store it in the refrigerator for up to four days. When ready to serve, reheat the dashi until it’s simmering before adding the tofu, seaweed and miso.

Can you freeze miso soup?

The same applies when freezing: Make the infused dashi first and freeze it. Thaw the dashi overnight in the fridge and reheat it until it’s simmering before adding the remaining ingredients. Tofu’s texture changes during freezing, so remove the tofu before freezing the soup. Frozen miso soup lasts up to two weeks in the freezer.

How do you reheat miso soup?

Reheat miso soup by bringing it to a simmer in a saucepan. Don’t let it boil, or you’ll lose nutrients and kill off the probiotics from the miso.

Miso Soup Tips

Taste of Home

How can you make a vegetarian miso soup?

To make vegetarian or vegan miso soup, use dashi powder made with dried seaweed, dried mushrooms and yeast extract. You can also make your vegetarian dashi by soaking kombu with dried shiitake mushrooms overnight in water.

What can you serve with miso soup?

Miso soup and a simple bowl of steamed rice make for a nice light meal. As part of a larger meal, you can serve it with sushi, ramen eggs (from our ramen recipe), onigiri (rice balls), Japanese pickles or cucumber salad, tempura, chicken katsu, teriyaki salmon or any of our other Japanese recipes. Finish the meal with mochi ice cream.