Speaker: What I am making for you now is a Miso soup. Now it's really, really popular in Japan and it's starting to become more and more available in the Western world. It's very, very easy to get it out of packet, but we are going to take it one step further. I am using some readily available Japanese ingredients. We are going to make a lovely little fresh Miso soup. Now the first ingredient that I want to introduce you to is Miso. The Miso is basically soybeans that have been fermented. It comes in two types. We have got White Miso and Red Miso. What I have today and you'll find this in any Asian market is a mix of the two, the red and the white. The red one is a little bit sweeter than the white and basically, Miso is a fantastic source of protein, because over 40% of that is protein. So that's a wonderful item.
The next ingredient that I am going to tell you about is this very innocuous looking little wakame seaweed. Wakame is basically going to form a very important part of this soup. Even though it looks tiny at the moment, when we add hot water to that, it's going to really, really expand. So you want to only use a tiny little handful. If you're looking for it in the Asian market it will come in a bag like this. Now what's in there is Bonito, there is a little bit of kelp and there is some kombu in there. Now that's basically, what we are going to do it's like a sake, the Japanese sake if we think of it like that. We are going to use that a base of our soup and we are just going to pop it into our nice boiling water and that will give us a really nice base or stock to work with. Those are also available in all Asian markets. Now one ingredient that goes into this soup that you probably do know is Tofu and one ingredient as a western that you definitely will know is the last thing we are going to drop in there which is some spring onions or scallions just to give it a nice bright color.
So now that you are a bit more familiar with all the ingredients we can go ahead and start building that soup. So what I have here is two liters of water. Now I am bringing it to the simmer very, very slowly because one thing that you should never ever do is boil Miso soup. We want to simmer it slowly and get those nice flavors, but don't ever, ever boil it. So in go my nice little teabags. We'll just allow it up to come to the simmer very, very slowly. So you can see that, that soup now is starting to just come to the boil. If I was using fresh dashi or fresh bonito flakes, there might be a little bit of scum on the top of that, that I would just lift off, but these little teabag things are quite good because they keep all of that little scummy part inside it. But that's really taken over strong distinctive flavor now. So the next thing that's going to go in there is my lovely Miso.
Now the proper way to put Miso in is you get it on your ladle and it's very important that it doesn't boil. I can't stress that enough. Now you're just going to set your ladle in there and stir it like that slowly until it all dissolves. So after about a minute you can see that it has really dissolved. We'll just finish it off by keeping it stirring for about another 20 seconds like that. As that just finishes dissolving, I am just going to carefully lift out my little teabags and get rid of them because they have fully done their job. Now I can get that really strong very, very nice flavor of the bonito especially coming through with the dashi.
So in go my mushrooms, I am using nice, big portobellos today, but you could use a shiitake, you could use a little bit of enoki, any mushroom that really takes your fancy. So just stir that up. I've got my nice tofu, which I've diced into about one centimeter squared pieces. So I am just going to drop that in. I am not boiling it, if we started boiling that, everything will start breaking down, the tofu and all that but we are just going to simmer it really slowly and you're going to end up with those lovely big, juicy pieces of tofu.
At the same time I am going to drop in that wakame and you'll see how big that gets in just about two minutes time.
So I think that soup really is just about ready to serve. If I show you the ladle, you've got your nice tofu in there, your mushrooms and have a really, really nice robust flavor. At the same time as being robust, it's a lovely light, little broth and it really, really does taste fantastic. So the last thing I am going to do is I am going to add in my spring onions, I am adding those at the end to keep it nice and green and really, really fresh and we will literally serve that immediately. Smells fantastic!
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