Quick Japanese Miso Soup Recipe

Delicious for breakfast, lunch or dinner, this homemade Japanese Miso Soup recipe is ready to warm you up. Filled with dashi, tofu, onion and pumpkin, it’s bursting with goodness and ready in 10 minutes.

Why We Love This

First up, it’s super flavourful AND super low in calories – I mean, how often does that happen? It’s quick to make – chop, boil and gorge in just 10 minutes.

You can also mix and match with your favourite vegetables to make your own super tasty deliciousness AND it’s rich and filling but totally not heavy. 

What is Japanese Miso Soup? 

The gorgeous bright orange chunks of pumpkin literally soak up all the amazing umami flavour from the blend of miso and dashi, while also transforming the humble broth into a rich, creamy, nourishing bowl of goodness.

This Japanese miso soup recipe uses a blend of white miso (shiro miso) and another key Japanese ingredient – dashi.

Shiro miso is a milder, sweeter variety of miso paste which melds perfectly with the umami flavour from the dashi – a blend of Japanese kombu and bonito.

We filled up on this soup for the first time in Kagoshima, southern Kyushu, made by our awesome friend Yuko and her super cute daughter Himari.  Yuko dished up this hot and tasty version as part of a traditional Japanese breakfast, spruced up with chunks of rich Japanese pumpkin that were literally melt-in-your-mouth soft. Mm mmm.

Lastly, we added some brown onion, our favourite firm tofu and a handful of dried wakame seaweed, but you could just as easily make this broth without tofu or seaweed if that’s more to your liking.

But why stop there? Feel free to customise as much as you like by adding in your favourite ingredients. Japanese daikon radish is an amazing addition, but you can’t go wrong with thinly sliced pork, your favourite mushrooms, fish or seafood.

Mix and match and make it how you like it.  So the next time you need a tasty soup to warm you up on a cold and stormy night, but one that won’t leave you feeling like you’re carrying a dead weight around, give this one a try.

Oh, and if you like to dip, here’s a pro-tip:

Hot buttered toast may be super Gaijin but it goes a-mazingly with this Pumpkin Miso Soup!

If you you’ve found a love of miso paste, here’s 12 more incredibly healthy recipes to cook next.

What You’ll Need

There’s a few key Japanese ingredients you’ll need to have on hand to pop this recipe together. In particular, white miso paste, wakame dried seaweed and dashi powder (or homemade dashi stock). Once you have these though, they last for ages so you can cook it up again and again without having to go back to the shop for the base ingredients. Miso paste in particular can be frozen for up to 18 months in the freezer!

We found all our ingredients at our local supermarket in the Asian aisle. If yours doesn’t stock it, try an Asian supermarket or online.

We used Japanese pumpkin (also known as Kabocha) as it’s a great sweet variety and super cheap in Japan. You can also leave the skin on which makes it nice and quick to chop up. If you can’t find it, try substituting with butternut pumpkin or Queensland blue pumpkin with skins removed.

How to make this 10 Minute Japanese Miso Soup recipe:

Place water and dashi stock into a large saucepan and bring to a boil.

Pop in your diced pumpkin and onion and boil for 5 minutes.

Add miso paste, and continue to cook until pumpkin is soft.

Add tofu and wakame and cook for further minute to warm the tofu without it breaking up. Garnish with green onion and serve immediately.

Wandercook’s Tips

• If the flavour of the broth is too intense for your taste, you can tone it down by adding a little more water.
• Leave the skins on your Japanese pumpkin, as they will soften. 
• We left the onion nice and chunky, but you can chop them finely if you prefer them to cook down into the soup broth.
• If you dissolve the miso into the soup with a strainer, it helps to avoid lumps and evenly disperses.
• If you can chop a pumpkin piece in half with your chopsticks, you know it’s soft enough!

FAQs

Variations

• If you can’t find Japanese pumpkin (Kabocha), try substituting with butternut pumpkin or Queensland blue pumpkin with skins removed.
• Not a fan of tofu or seaweed? Pop in a carrot, zucchini or eggplant instead. 
• You can use red miso paste if that’s all you can find, but the taste will be stronger and saltier, so use a little less as a pre-caution.

Make it a full Japanese meal with these additions:

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