Winter-Crud-Curing Miso Soba Soup
Simple Miso Soba Soup: The easy 30-minute soup that will cure your winter sniffles! Loaded with umami flavors and just enough spice!
Winter-Crud-Curing Miso Soba Soup
Jump to RecipeEven though February has some good things going for it (namely, my birthday), I couldn’t be happier to see it behind me this year. I don’t think there was a single day in the entire month that someone in my family wasn’t sick. Most days more than one of us has the crud.
It was a rough month filled with coughs, sniffles, teething (just for the little dude), and just general BLAHHH.
I tried many things throughout the month to try and help us all recover, but last week this Winter-crud-curing soup seemed to push us over the edge. We all sat around, yes even T, slurping noodles, sipping rich miso broth, and felt better almost instantly.
There are some involved miso recipes out there on the Internets, but this one is fairly easy. After all, if you’re not feeling great, the last thing you need is an involved recipe. I made this Simple Miso Soba Soup on a Wednesday without a struggle.
- Want a different soba noodle bowl option? Try this one with a homemade mushroom broth!
Simple Miso Soba Soup
- Serves:
- Serves 4
- Prep Time:
- Total Time:
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The easy 30-minute soup that will cure your winter sniffles! Loaded with umami flavors and just enough spice!
Ingredients
Instructions
1) Dice onions and Fresno pepper and mince garlic. Rinse and roughly chop the mushrooms. Whisk together water with miso paste.
2) In a medium pot add oil over medium heat. Add onions, peppers, and garlic. Cook for 3-4 minutes until onions soften. Add mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes.
3) Add in miso paste and water and bring to a simmer. Add cubed tofu and turn heat down to low. Season with soy sauce.
4) Cook soba noodles according to package. Once cooked, drain and rinse with cold water. Toss with 1 teaspoon sesame oil.
5) Serve soup in big bowls ladled over soba noodles and garnished with slivered carrot, scallion, cilantro, chili oil, and sesame oil.
Simple Miso Soba Soup
Let’s Talk Miso
Miso paste comes in a variety of forms. If you have a decent Asian market in your area, you’ll probably have more than one option. To be honest, I’m far from an expert here, but I do use and like Marukome Boy paste. If you can’t find that version, I wouldn’t be shy about asking someone at the store for their recommendation.
I go heavy with my miso flavor because I want an intense broth so I use about 3 tablespoons of paste and whisk it into some water to make sure it isn’t clumping. You should probably start with 2 tablespoons if you aren’t sure about the strength of your paste.
Cooking the Soup
This soup is pretty easy actually. Start with a drizzle of oil in a medium pan over medium heat.
Add the onions, garlic, and peppers and cook them until they soften (3-4 minutes).
The other additions to this soup are shiitake mushrooms and tofu. I like to leave my mushrooms in large chunks (halves or quarters). Betsy thought they were too chunky, but I liked them like this.
Add those into the pot along with the vegetable stock and dissolved miso paste water.
Bring that all to a simmer and simmer it for a few minutes.
Then in with the tofu!
Let that continue to simmer over low heat while you make the soba and stuff. Season it with a dash of soy sauce and taste it and adjust! Make it your own!
Soba Noodles
This soup is pretty good with no noodles honestly, but pouring it over some cooked soba noodles makes it a full meal for sure.
Soba noodles cook fast. After they cook in boiling water, drain them and rinse them with cold water to prevent them from sticking. They are notorious for sticking!
Then toss them with a dash of sesame oil. These are ready to go!
Serving the soup is straightforward. Pile some noodles in a bowl and ladle over the soup. Then toppings galore: carrots, cilantro, scallion, chili oil, sesame oil. You need and want it all!
If you have even the slightest itch in your throat, or if you just want a great bowl of soup, make this simple miso soba soup happen!
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Hello! My name is Nick Evans and I write and manage Macheesmo. I started Macheesmo 11 years ago when I was just learning my way around the kitchen. I love to cook and love everything food-related, but I have no formal training. These days I focus on fast, accessible recipes with the occasional “reach” recipe!
I’ve posted almost 2,000 recipes on Macheesmo. For each one, I do my best to give full explanations of what I did and tips on what I’d do differently next time. I’ll bring up the tricky parts and the easy parts.
I hope you can find something and cook something!
My mom swears by miso for curing colds. This is what she would serve us when we were sick as children. Her recipe was very basic. Onions, wakame(seaweed), tofu, and a light sprinkling of scallions on top. If there was leftover rice in the fridge we’d spoon some miso over that to make it heartier. We loved Mugi miso which is a type of barley miso. It’s fermented longer and has a richer flavor. Yum!
That’s awesome Elizabeth. Thanks for the miso tip! I’m pretty new to cooking with miso so it’s nice to hear recs for other types/options. Thanks again!
This looks so good, I recently bought my first container of miso. It’s white miso, all that was available. I look forward to seeing more recipes using it.
That soup looks so good that it almost makes we want to get sick just so I can make it to feel better! (Almost…) I’ve never made miso soup. This is a must try!
I like everything about this but the title of the recipe? I understand the usefulness of curing colds with soup, but I really don’t like to think of or hear the word “crud” so close to something I’m going to eat. Can’t it be Winter Healing Miso Soba Soup?
I’ve made this twice in the past two weeks, and I absolutely love it, so do all the friends I’ve shared it with, so THANK YOU for introducing this soup to my life.
How I’ve messed with the recipe:
– I had nori on hand, so I added three sheets, cut into small pieces.
– Both times I’ve run short on broth, so I will be increasing the vegetable broth to 5 or 6 cups in the future, and possibly increasing the amount of miso paste to suit. My ratio of broth to things-in-the-broth is too low for a couple reasons:
1. I use 400g of firm tofu (about 14 oz), because that’s the size the packages of tofu that I buy come in. And I don’t want to find an alternative use for 2 oz of tofu, so in it goes.
2. I love mushrooms, so I tend to add extras of that too.
-The selection of fresh herbs available in stores right now (Canada) is sad, so I’ve only used scallions as toppings (and grated carrots, of course). But I look forward to making this again with cilantro!
Awesome Meg! Love your changes! Awesome idea with the nori. I’ll have to try that. Thanks for reporting back! :)
This is so so good.
Please correct me if I’m wrong… firstly great recipe …definitely trying it out … but what about the miso ?? Have always read about Miso not being cooked or simmered but rather tempered and added last minute ?? True ??