Miso Soup
Ingredients
4 cups dashi stock (or vegetable stock)
3 tbsp miso paste (white or yellow; red will be stronger taste)
100 g tofu (use silken tofu for more traditional miso soup)
1 sheet wakame/nori (dry seaweed), cut into large rectangles
2 tbsp green onions, chopped
Directions
Reconstitute wakame seaweed by putting them into a small bowl of water.
Dice the tofu and set aside.
Bring stock to boil in a saucepan over medium heat
Add the diced tofu into the stock to cook.
Drain and squeeze out excess water out of the wakame seaweed and add wakame to the saucepan to cook for a few minutes.
Turn the heat off and add miso paste
Once all the miso has dissolved, turn the heat back on.
Turn the heat off just before the miso soup reaches boiling point.
Serve Miso soup and garnish with chopped green onions.
Notes
If you don't have a sieve, you can dissolve miso paste directly but it will take longer and may leave some lumpy parts and also if you use store bought miso paste which is very fine and smooth, you can make miso soup without a sieve.
Stop cooking just before it boils. This point is called "Niebana" and it is the time that the fragrance and flavour of miso soup is simply the best and the most delicious. If the miso soup boils, the alcohol created in the process of miso fermentation and which is also the component of the fragrance will be lost by evaporation.