Making easy miso-honey drizzle with local miso company YokaMiso

Miso, the Japanese fermented soybean paste is not just used in the soup you get at Japanese restaurants. From marinades to caramels — the possibilities are endless! 

Anna Sugiyama founded her own Miso company, YokaMiso, right here in Seattle! She joined the show to talk with us about the versatility of miso and share a recipe for Honey Miso Drizzle that she put on top of toasted sourdough bread with avocado, egg, and pickled onions! 

Honey Miso Drizzle

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 tsp Honey 
• 1 1/2 tsp Miso

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix well, add more or less to taste. 
2. Drizzle over whatever your heart desires.

Traditional Miso Soup

Serves: 4 | Prep time: 5 minutes | Total time: 15 minutes

Miso soup is a small side dish that accompanies most Japanese meals. There are hundreds of ways to make it. This simple recipe is a good way to start your own version. While you can add just about anything to your soup, the three basic ingredients are miso, dashi, and scallions — and these ingredients are consistent across all recipes. 

Generally, miso soup is a simple dish, with only a few extra ingredients. Traditional dashi is fish-based, but it is absolutely OK to substitute it for a vegetable, meat, or chicken-based dashi. For this recipe, we will use an easy instant dashi. 

Experiment with more or less miso paste and more or less dashi. Don’t add salt! The miso paste has plenty already. 

INGREDIENTS:

• 3-4 tablespoons miso paste (or more if you want a deep miso flavor)
• 1 tablespoon concentrated fish stock powder (dashi)
• ½ block soft (kinu) tofu, cut into ½ inch cubes 
• 2 scallions chopped into small rings
• Four or five 1-inch pieces of seaweed (wakame)
• 4 ½ cups water

DIRECTIONS:

1. Boil water with the dashi. After it boils, add the wakame and the tofu. 
2. Then add the miso right before serving. This step is important. You do not want to add the miso while the water is boiling. 
3. Gently mix until the miso is dissolved, the wakame is soft, and the tofu is hot. Mix the soup before serving, as it tends to separate, and the miso forms beautiful clouds. 
4. Ladle into small bowls and add the scallions.  

VARIATIONS are endless, but here are a few suggestions that we like to do at home:

• Various recipes call for a “clear” miso soup. To do this, dissolve the miso in your water (at the very end, just before you serve) through a hand strainer and throw out the hulls.
• Add one or two other vegetables such as cubed potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, chopped onions, eggplant, mushrooms, etc. Make sure the vegetables are cooked thoroughly before adding the miso paste. 
• Crack a fresh egg into the bowl before you add the soup. Or cook it longer in the soup before serving. 
• Brown the outside of some chopped fall vegetables in sesame oil before adding them to the soup and allow them to finish cooking in the soup. It makes a satisfying meal. 
• Add seasonal vegetables from your garden. Fresh snap peas in the spring, and beets in the winter. 
• Drop in a piece of mochi and let it get soft and a bit gooey before serving. 
• Add freshly rinsed mung bean sprouts to the soup just before serving. 
  Add a bit of Korean kimchi to your bowl of soup for some heat. 
  Make a few small carrot flowers with a knife and add them to the soup for something pretty. 
• Before you finish your meal, scoop the rest of your rice into your soup for a hearty last mouthful.  
• Use red (aka) miso for a deeper and richer flavor. Or mix two types of miso together for a unique blend. 
• Save a little leftover soup for breakfast and serve it with leftover rice.  

Segment Producer Keegan Daley. Watch New Day Northwest 11 AM weekdays on KING 5 and streaming live on KING5.com. Contact New Day.