Healthy Kale Miso Soup
I made miso soup, you guys! I finally got my hands on some South River Miso chickpea miso. It’s soy-free, which means I can have miso soup for the first time since I went soy-free a year ago!
I made up a recipe - a delicious recipe - for really healthy, easy miso soup. Here it is. I got about 5 bowls of soup out of this, but it should really be a side dish rather than a whole meal.
INGREDIENTS:
4 generous cups of water
1 strip dried kombu seaweed
Handful of dried shitake mushrooms (optional)
3-4 thick slices of ginger (optional)
6 baby carrots, grated (It’s all I had! If you have normal-sized carrots, just grate maybe half of it)
5 stalks of kale
Half an onion, cut into thin strips
Drizzle of neutral oil (I used Canola)
2 Tablespoons miso paste (I used South River chickpea miso, but I think any kind of miso would also work)
Drizzle of sesame oil (optional)
Pinch of salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. With miso soup, you should first start with a stock called dashi. To make the dashi, combine water and kombu seaweed in a medium pot. This is all that is necessary, but if you want better flavor, add shitake mushrooms and/or ginger. Cover and simmer over medium heat for 10-20 min. By the time it is ready, it should smell good!
2. Remove kombu, ginger, and shitake mushrooms from the dashi. Slice the shitake mushrooms into thin strips, removing their tough stems, and place them back in the broth.
3. Add carrots and kale to the broth, bringing it to a low boil until the kale is tender, about 5-10 minutes.
4. As the kale cooks, pour a small amount of your neutral oil into a pan and saute the onions. When they are translucent and cooked through, transfer them to the soup.
5. When all your veggies are done, take the pot off the heat. Put your miso in a separate small bowl, and pour a ladleful of the broth into the bowl with the miso. Whisk it together with a fork until the miso is incorporated into the liquid. Then pour the miso-broth combination into the soup pot and stir to incorporate. This extra step of adding the miso to the small amount of broth first makes it easier to incorporate the miso soup evenly into the broth.
6. Add a drizzle of sesame oil to the soup, if you wish. Stir in a last pinch of salt.
7. Eat. Enjoy. Miso soup, everybody!
This recipe has endless variations. Use different vegetables, use no vegetables. Make your dashi more traditional by adding bonito flakes. Use more or less miso. Etc. Experiment!
You get bonus points if, like me, you made a quick detour into Building 19 on the way to the grocery store to buy shitake mushrooms and walked out with Ecstasia by Francesca Lia Block and The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs, both of which were on your carefully curated Amazon wish list, for a total of $2.17. That’s right, bitches. I’m bragging.
