miso soup with pork, tofu, mushroom, and daikon radish

One of the most popular everyday food in Japanese diet. Miso soup can be simple and luxuriously rich, with vegetables or all kinds of protein ingredients. Miso is the fermented paste made by soybean, rice, or barley. This traditional Japanese ingredient goes well with almost everything! it tastes good, and is very good for your health.

Specially mentioned, two of ingredients I use, red miso paste, is the souvenir from my trip to Takayama, Japan. and the dried seaweed, Hokkaido Ri Shiri Konbu, is a gift from my sister in her trip to Japan.

Enjoy the soup!

item	weight	cups or spoons
SOUP BASE (DASHI)
water	960 g	4 cups
dried seaweed (konbu)	30 g	1/3 cup
dried fish flakes (dried bonito flakes)	30 g	2 cups
(or use fish stock powder if no dried bonito flakes)	(5 g)	(1 tsp)
OTHER INGREDIENTS
miso paste	30 g	2 tbsp
pork	300 g	10 ounces
daikon radish	300 g	2 cups
tofu	300 g	1  1/2 cup
deep-fried bean curd sheet	100 g	1/2 cup
mushroom	100 g	1/2 cup
green onion	30 g	2 stems
reference	1 cup = 240ml	1 tbsp = 15ml, 1 tsp = 5ml

1. chop all the ingredients
   • pork: 2-inch thin slices (5cm)
   • daikon radish: 2-inch strips (5cm)
   • mushroom: 2-inch length thin slices (5cm)
   • tofu: 1-inch dices (2.5cm)
   • deep fried tofu: 2-inch shreds (5cm)
   • green onion: 1/4-inch dices (1cm)
2. clean the dried seaweed, soaked in 4 cups of water for 30 minutes
3. clean the deep fried tofu with hot water

SOUP BASE

1. put the seaweed water in a pot, turn on the low heat, let it slowly cook
2. when it starts boiling, have the soaked seaweed taken out
3. add the dried fish flake, turn off the heat, let it simmer for 10 minutes
4. have the the fish flakes filtered out, the soup base is complete

OTHER INGREDIENTS

Except miso paste, we can put all the other ingredients into the soup, before that, I like to have them seared and saute a little bit

1. start with a clean pot, add some oil
2. sear the pork, and take out
3. and daikon radish, mushroom,
4. then add the soup base, add 2 kinds of tofu
5. let it cook for 20 minutes until the daikon radish is cooked through

ADDING MISO PASTE

1. scoop up some soup and mix with miso paste
2. put the mixture back to the pot
3. add the pork and green onion
4. let it cook for 3 more minutes, and the miso soup is done!