Miso Confused

ahava

Dear H/A,

I have a small tub of Miso paste. I have tried to use it for many applications, and have so far found them to be alright. However, the boyfriend has tried on many occasions to make soup by adding this paste to hot water and we just cannot seem to get the proportions right.

Any help in this matter would be most appreciated.


Also, the date on the package is that April 8 or August 4?

Elin

Miso soup is made buy mixing miso paste into dashi stock, not water. That is most likely why it isn't working out. There are different types of dashi but I think miso soup traditionally uses fish stock, but I could be wrong.

Gruffalo Soldier

Generally speaking if the year comes first in a date, it will be in the format YYYY-MM-DD, meaning your Miso's expiry date is April 8th, 2011.

It is possible that this is different in the country of origin, but this is my experience.

EggyToast

Yeah, pretty sure that expired on April 8th.

As for making the soup, I'll echo what Elin said. Miso is more than just paste and hot water -- you need dashi, which is the "secret ingredient" (meaning you don't know it's in there just by looking at it), and it really does taste better with some green onion/scallions, nori, and tofu.

Niceguy Myeye

You can probably get some instant seaweed dashi where you got the miso.

Alternately, you can try to dilute it a little bit and use it as a sauce to stir fry some eggplant. It seems to go really well with eggplant.

Hypatia

Also, when adding the paste one way you can do it is to put a spoonful of miso into a ladle, dip the ladle into the water to fill it, then use the smaller spoon to gradually mix part of the miso into the water in the ladle. When you've done some of it but still have a lump of miso on the ladle left, dunk the ladle into the water, pull it back up so you keep your ball of miso, and then mix what's in the pot and taste it. If it isn't strong enough, repeat, otherwise you can scoop the rest of your miso ball out of your ladle and stop adding. It wastes a little bit but it helps a lot when you're first trying to figure out how much you want to add.

mts

you can make a really kick ass soup with that

recipe i use

1 big package of chicken or veggie stock
3-4 T of miso paste
a splash or two of sake
whisk it up
chop up a few green onions and throw them in
add a ton of mushrooms to it, our grocery store sells a mushroom mix that has like shitaki an oyster mushrooms etc i use that, and supplement with more crimini's

on medium heat bring to a boil

drop in two or so filets of a white fish (i like Roughy) and put a lid on it and poach for 10 minutes or so. if its an extra thick piece of fish, go longer

while fish is poaching, make some of those rice noodles (mei fun i think) .

when fish is done, serve fish and broth over the noodles. garnish with more green onion and enjoy.

ahava

hmm.

ok so the paste is past expiration date. so that's one thing to worry about.

and the dashi...

alright, looks like I need to do some more experimenting.


I can get bonito flakes at the store, but not dashi that I know of... I'll have to ask them.


of course I also want eggroll wrappers. I'm gonna need to head out to the big stores around here..


Thanks guys!

poshniallo

You can buy bonito dashi or konbu (kelp) dashi at an Asian store.

Miso doesn't have a 'use by' date, it has a 'best before' date - it will still be fine, just not as nice. Do you get what I mean - I don't know if they label food that way in your country.

You can also use miso in a chicken 'nabe' (Japanese stew) or other more meaty stews.

You can also make a sauce to go on top of meat after cooking (e.g. fried cutlets, or katsu in Japanese, but also any meat is fine).

Oh, and you can use it while cooking fish (that's called 'miso ni' or 'miso ni komi' - can be done with meat but it's usually fish).

And finally that's Korean miso which tastes slightly different from Japanese miso (which then has lots of types too), so your final dish might differ from what you were expecting.

But some dashi, some miso (don't boil it) and some chopped veggies (e.g. long onions, mushrooms) will taste great.

ahava

I mixed it up earlier with some brown mustard and some brown sugar and used it as a marinate over salmon a while back and it tasted pretty good.

and yeah the best buy thing makes sense.


hmm alright this will be an adventure, since i don't speak any asian dialect...


i look forward to the adventure!!

L|ama

holy shit something nearly useful coming out of my interest in kpop

korea (which that is from) does dates year/month/day, usually even more confusingly as YEARMONTHDAY (ie 20110408)

so yeah it's definitely 8 april 2011

mts

its fermented soy bean, if anything its just aging more

Satsumomo

Yeah, it won't go bad unless you keep it out of the fridge.

CrossBuster

Isn't miso extremely salty? And aren't expiration dates pretty conservative?

Miso that's only a month past its expiration date, presuming it's been refrigerated, will almost certainly be fine.

CygnusZ

lonelyahava wrote: »

I mixed it up earlier with some brown mustard and some brown sugar and used it as a marinate over salmon a while back and it tasted pretty good.

and yeah the best buy thing makes sense.


hmm alright this will be an adventure, since i don't speak any asian dialect...


i look forward to the adventure!!

I'm not sure how easy it is to find, but if you go to an Asian supermarket that stocks Japanese items you should be able to find "instant" miso-soup kits (usually they have 8 servings or so) that include the exact proportions to make a single bowl. Just make it a few times with that to get some sense of the proportions, and how the amount of Miso/Dashi in proportion to water effects the taste of the soup.