Miso soup

A friend bought me the Miso soup paste after hearing that I have been looking for it. Apparently a lot of the off the shelves miso paste contains non-halal ingredient. She got this one from a shop selling natural goods, and ingredients are all vegetarians and no achohol.

For the dashi stock, you will need (i got the konbu and bonito flakes from Isetan KLCC):

- 2 x 4 inches konbu ( some kind of dried seaweed)

- 1 x cup of bonito flakes (shaved dried fish flakes)

- 4 cups of water 

For the add ons, basically you can just add on anything u fancy, some have seaweeds, or those soft tofu, it really is up to you but I prefer these:

- dried tofu

- spring onions

And not forgetting the miso itself. Mine is a paste, but it also comes in powder.

I was making it based on the recipe from this site :

http://justhungry.com/2006/08/a_week_of_miso_soup_day_1_zucc.html

I am not gonna rewrite it since it was practically the same, so I'll just post the pix of what I did.

Step 1: 

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6: the miso, i found that I dont need to mix it with the stock beforehand, it is okay to just stir it after

Finally:

The final verdict -

Taste wise, its quite okay and not too bad for a first try.

However, would I be making it again? Maybe not. While its quite easy to make, its too time consuming ( because u need to let the konbu sits for a while) and the ingredients are not exactly cheap.  The ingredients costs nearly RM20, maybe more, while you can just have those at the Japanese restaurants for around RM2.50 per bowl. Doesnt really justifies it, but of course u will know for sure that it is halal and if you make the dashi stock in big batches, you can always skip the time consuming bit and have it ready in less than 10 mins.