Have you tasted kelp?
A lot of people may know kelp as material for stock (dashi). Making kelp stock is very simple by heating water and kelp, but it’s not so easy to create delicate taste.
I feel that making kelp stock from scratch would lead to wonderful miso soup. However I always choose easier way which is using dashi granules.
You can find several kind of dashi granules such as bonito, kelp, small sardines and so on. Either one tastes so good and this very convenient condiment spoils me a lot haha.
I want to write a blog post making “real stock” sometime in the future though…
By the way, kelp is not only for stock but can be excellent ingredient for Japanese cuisine!
Do you know there are many delicious kelp processed food?
Great examples are following: boiled kelp for Oden stew, kelp flavored with sweetened soy sauce, and salty kelp.
I love to use those items for stew, side dishes for rice, or even for spaghetti sauce.
Today’s key item: SHAVED KELP (tororo-kombu) is one of those useful kelp processed food.
The first step of making shaved kelp is that mix dried kelp with vinegar. Then large quantity of the kelp piece flavored with vinegar will be compressed and coagulated into one big block.
Finally the big block of kelp become shaved kelp by being cut with a machine.
Vinegar is actually one of the best seasoning to make kelp soft and even better taste.
Let’s make miso soup with this newcomer today!
【Recipe (2 servings)】
Ingredients
1 oz miso paste (fermented soybean paste)*1
1 teaspoon dashi granules*2
7.5 oz tomato
2 tablespoons shaved kelp (tororo-kombu)
1 tablespoon dried-bonito shavings
1.7 cups (400ml) water
(Prepare extra water to peel tomato skin in boiled water)
*1 Feel free to adjust the amounts of miso paste to your liking.
*2 If miso paste already contains dashi, don’t need dashi granules.
Directions
1. Heat water and whole tomato. (Cut in the top of tomato before putting it in water).
2. When some parts of tomato skin come off, remove whole tomato from saucepan. Then peel whole skin.
3. Boil water for miso soup. Then add dashi granules and miso paste, and stir until miso is completely melted.
4. Slice tomato and back them to miso soup. Put shaved kelp and dried-bonito shavings to your liking.
Ready to eat!
Unlike other seaweed miso soup, shaved kelp miso soup gave me awesome flavor of vinegar.
Fluffy shaved kelp with vinegar flavor matches so well with tomato.
I think the unique smell of kelp doesn’t bother you if it’s with dried-bonito shavings.
I hope you will like this refreshing miso soup!
Enjoy your miso soup!
