For Easy Miso Soup, Use Your Kettle

Miso soup, one of the world's simplest soups made with nothing but dashi stock, miso paste, and garnishes, is comfort food to me, especially when it has bits of silken tofu, seaweed, and scallions floating in it. It's a meal I ate countless times at my grandmother's table, and one I still crave whether first thin in the morning or late at night.

Thankfully, it's extremely simple to make.

One of the wonderful things about dashi, the standard Japanese stock made with katsuobushi (shaved smoked skipjack tuna - available here) and kombu (dried kelp - available here) is that it allows you to develop a deep, savory flavor with a minimal amount of time. Unlike Western broths made with bones, which can take hours or even days of simmering to fully extract flavor and gelatin, Japanese dashi is steeped more in the manner of tea. It's a broth that can be made in a matter of minutes.

In fact, tea bag-style dashi bases are a widely available shortcut to traditional dashi ingredients, designed to allow you to make a couple servings of dashi for soups using a hot water kettle (such as the BALMUDA Moonkettle I use here). All you do is pour boiling water over the bags, let the steep for a few minutes, then take out the bags and discard them.

At home, I typically brew loose-leaf tea, either a cup at a time with a metal tea infuser, or in a teapot with a larger infuser. So I thought to myself: if I can brew tea with a metal infuser, why not dashi?

Turns out it works extremely well. All you have to do is pack typical dashi ingredients into a tea infuser, pour boiling water over it, and a few minutes later, you've got dashi.

To make the path to miso soup even faster, I add miso paste directly to the infuser (any color paste will do). Any garnishes that need re-hydrating (such as dried seaweed or freeze-dried fried tofu) I add to the teapot outside of the strainer, and any garnishes that only need heating (such as fresh tofu, scallions, or cooked seafood) I'll add directly to the serving bowl.

I can't think of a faster or easier way to get comfortable.

Easy Tea Kettle Miso Soup

This recipe is sponsored by BALMUDA, makers of The Moonkettle. Shop for BALMUDA products at us.BALMUDA.com using the code “KENJI_15” to unlock 15% off on all purchases.

Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.

What I like about this recipe:

• Using a tea strainer to make dashi makes discarding the steeped kelp and bonito simple.

• Fresh dashi made with real kelp and bonito flakes makes the most flavorful miso soup.

• Using an electric kettle and a metal tea strainer make this a truly one-dish meal.

YIELD: Serves 2-3

ACTIVE TIME: 10 minutes

TOTAL TIME: 15 minutes

Notes: You can find katsuobushi here , kombu here, and niboshi (small dried fish) here, or at any Japanese or Asian market, or in the international aisle of better-stocked supermarkets. Niboshi are small dried fish. Hijiki is dried seaweed. You can get it here.

Ingredients

• A 3-inch square of kombu, cut into small pieces

• A half dozen or so niboshi

• A few big pinches of katsuobushi

• 2 tablespoons (30g) miso paste, any color

• A couple big pinches of hijiki

• Kosher salt and/or MSG

• 3 ounces firm silken tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (optional)

• Thinly sliced scallions (optional)

Steps

1. Combine the kombu, niboshi, katsuobushi, and miso paste in the infuser of a tea pot. Place the hijiki in the bottom of the pot (outside the strainer). Top with 12-16 ounces (350 to 450ml) boiling water from a tea kettle. Let steep for 5 minutes then stick a spoon into the strainer and swirl it around to push the miso out into the soup. Lift the strainer and push inside it with the spoon to extract as much flavor and liquid as possible.

2. Season soup to taste with salt and/or MSG as desired. Place the tofu and scallions in the bottom of 2 to 3 small bowls. Pour the soup from the pot over the tofu and scallions. Serve immediately.