Miso Soup With Shiitake Mushrooms Recipe

Miso Soup without Dashi Broth

This miso soup with shiitake mushrooms is better than takeout! It’s flavorful and rich. It’s the perfect plant-based replacement for chicken soup. Miso soup is filled with yummy vegetables from the land and sea. The main ingredient miso paste great for gut health since it contains probiotics. It’s my favorite macrobiotic recipe!

This is also a miso soup recipe without dashi. Dashi is hard to find and has a fishy flavor that Americans aren’t used to. So with this recipe you can still get all of the health benefits of miso soup without the fishy taste of.

Why I love this Soup

The best food stories are the kind that keep getting told.

Recipes that are discovered by one individual and then made, eaten, loved and then finally shared with others. Some of these recipes have gone on to be experienced by 100’s, if not probably 1000’s of people. Morphing a recipe into a memory that is woven into the fabric of our lives.

this soup is one of those recipes.

this recipe has been discovered and rediscovered by many through one of my teachers at the Natural Gourmet Institute, Chef Elliot Prag. Chef Elliot has a long history with macrobiotic food. After eating and studying macrobiotic cooking for years as well as attending the Kushi Institute in Boston, I would consider him an expert. Sadly the Kushi Institute has closed but their book on the benefits of a macrobiotic diet is still available.

I was surprised that Chef Elliot’s miso soup recipe doesn’t use dashi. But I don’t like making Dashi Broth anyway so I don’t mind, since I don’t particularly like the smell of fish flakes. Plus, leaving it out keeps this soup vegan.

Miso Soup a corner stone of Macrobiotic Cooking?

Macrobiotic cooking was first introduced to me in culinary school. Being that my background is strongly rooted in cellular cleansing, I looked at macrobiotic food as a great accompaniment to cleansing food. In that it keeps the body balanced, but doesn’t necessarily cleanse the body too quickly.

Macrobiotic food is perfect to mix in with a vegan, raw, or a plant-based diet when your immunity and/or the outside temperature is low. Macrobiotic diets were popular in the 1970’s. Even though Macrobiotic food isn’t exactly in style anymore I hope that we can rediscover its benefits and bring them into the 2020’s. Almost everything from the seventy’s is back anyway!

Chicken Soup for Vegans

Traditional, well prepared Miso Soup is like Penicillin or Green Juice. It gives you exactly what you need when you need it and leaving you satisfied. Miso Soup is also very good for people who need to heal their digestive systems, but are too sensitive for raw fruits and vegetables at any given time.

Miso is a cultured food filled with good bacteria for the gut. So miso soup is great for gut health. And gut health has been linked with a stronger immune system and good mental health. If Miso is boiled the heat will kill the good flora. So it is important to mix in the Miso Paste in after the soup is finished cooking and has cooled slightly.

How to Reheat

When reheating as a left over always gently bring up the heat don’t boil :). Miso paste is also high in vitamins E, K and folic acid. Folic acid is important to take if you pregnant.

What Ingredients Do You Need?

Aside from miso paste, which we mentioned already miso soup is made up of a mixture of vegetables found in asian cooking including sea vegetables, fresh vegetables, ginger, garlic and sesame oil. You’ll find common vegetables like carrots, onions and celery along with not so common wakame, arame and Kombu. Kombu is used in asian cooking the same way a bay leaf is used. It is cooked with the dish to add flavor but isn’t eaten. If you can’t find some of these sea vegetables you can sub out any. I often cannot find arame at the store and just double up on the amount of wakame I use.

Sea vegetables are rich in minerals found in the ocean including magnesium and iron. Their flavor is mild and tolerable for those not used to sea vegetables! Especially when mixed into this tasty miso soup recipe!

Aromatics are used to add flavor and depth to the soup. Fresh ginger and sliced garlic create subtile notes that elevate the flavor of this soup compared to the plain miso soup that you find in restaurants, or in packets. Learn the benefits of Fresh ginger here.

How to Make Miso Soup

Step 1: Slice the onions, carrots, celery and shiitake mushrooms. In a large soup pot sweat them for about ten minutes. Meanwhile, soak the sea vegetables in water.

Step 2: rinse the sea vegetables and put them in the soup pot. Sauté the soup for another ten minutes or so. Until the vegetables are soft. Add water and bring the soup to a boil. Meanwhile peel and grate the ginger. To get the juice out of the ginger place the shredded pieces in a cheese cloth and squeeze them over a bowl. Set it aside for later. You can also just run the ginger through a juicer if you have one.

Step 3: Once the soup is boiling lower it to a simmer and continue to cook for another 10-15 minutes with the lid off. Turn the stove off and let the broth cool for a few minutes. Then Mix the miso paste in with a whisk. Make sure that the miso paste is fully mixed in and that there are no chunks. You don’t want to eat chunks of salty miso while enjoying your soup!

More Healthy Soup Recipes

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• Freezer Pea Soup in 20 Minutes
• Vegan Mushroom Soup
• Carrot Ginger Soup with Sweet Potato