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Steve is in a miso soup kick. He's been buying it from TJ's, but I'd like to make it from scratch. It seems simple enough. I have Kombu and bonito flakes as well as red miso. Any words of wisdom on either? TIA

I've made it many times. It is pretty straightforward, I've not a lot to offer, but I one thing to explore is the content of the soup. When I'm in honolulu and eat at Japanese restaurants, I often get it with various and assorted veg in it, quite delicious. I usually can't identify the actual vegetables, but they root-ish and I'll bet NA root vegetables would work too. And of course fungi of various sorts work nicely.

White miso works nicely as well.

Tip: leftover miso soup does not keep well. Make only as much as you'll eat.

Alina,

Also: if you get to a serious Asian market, you'll discover that there are many brands and grades of konbu, miso, and bonito. That way lies madness, especially since it requires reading labels in Japanese, Chinese and/or Korean. Although if you do want to get into it, the quality of the miso makes the biggest difference. Shiro miso, often sold as "white" miso even though it's a pale yellow color, is the most common one for miso soup.

Generally there's two kinds of seaweed in miso soup. There's the thick konbu you use to make the dashi, and the thinner seaweed in small pieces you use as a vegetable in the soup, sometimes thin konbu but more often wakame. Incidentally, a bowl of homemade miso soup gives you three weeks' RDA of iodide.

Josh, there is a small Asian market near my house, but since I don't read any of the pertinent language, I might be in for some surprises. I went one day and bought a few packages of different noodles and then came home and tried to figure out what they were. It was fun.
I'll let Steve know about the miso not keeping well.

We went to our local Japanese restaurant Saturday and had a wonderful meal. Our chef was very generous and took a liking to us, so Steve's niece and I got tasting portions of everyone else dishes. Their salad had a wonderful light dressing. They said it was just miso soup and honey. Would leftover soup work for that?

Alina,

I've never made dressing out of leftover miso soup, so you're on your own. Seems to me anything would be too watery.

The standard "Japanese" dressing is miso-sesame dressing, made with shiro miso and ground raw or toasted sesame seeds. I buy it in bottles most of the time, so I don't have a good recipe for you.

Widely regarded as the best in America: The American Miso Co. http://www.misorecipes.net/about-the-american-miso-company/ distributed in part through Whole Foods.

and their book from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Miso-Book-Art-Cooking/dp/0757000282

Wino, Alina,

The Japanese supermarket in San Francisco has an entire floor-to-ceiling cooler case full of miso. 70% of the packages are labelled only in Japanese; another 10% in Chinese and/or Korean. Given this, I can't possibly comparison-shop, so I just choose the variety I want (fortunately grouped by shelf) and then buy a package which is priced just above the median price.

The Hatcho Miso was a revelation. Dark-brown and firm as plaster, it tastes more like a salted tootsie roll than like miso. No good for soup, of course, but great as a sauce base.

One thing I learned to look for in Shiro Miso is salt content. Some brands can have 1/2 the salt of others, which can matter quite a bit in some applications. I've read the made in Japan for Japan brands tend to be lower. Here I ended up with Eden organics, which was lower. The particular place I got bitten was in sautéed corn with miso butter, which is damn good but you need to watch the salt in it. Also used the miso butter on asparagus...

Here's an article I just sent to my miso-loving daughter. http://food52.com/blog/12051-how-to-mak ... 9qfZj1:gHy