Miso Soup for Breakfast?

We start off Monday mornings with our Mood Boost dance party. We also start our weeks off with a special breakfast: Vegetable Miso Soup. Because variety is the spice of life and an important part of a healthy diet, and because we didn’t want our kids eating cereal every morning, we started a breakfast rotation, so we eat different things on different days of the week.

Directions:

Chop the onion and begin to saute in oil on medium heat. Once they begin to become translucent or brown a little add in the garlic, ginger, turmeric, and black pepper and reduce the heat a bit and stir for a few minutes. Add the Soy Sauce and Rice Vinegar, and saute for an additional few minutes before adding all of the chopped veggies. Let the veggies cook for a few minutes and then add water followed by seaweed, stir and let simmer for 10-15 minutes. 

Turn off the heat and add the miso. I find the most effective way is to take a strainer, and rub the miso paste through the strainer into the pot with a spoon. Serve hot with a hard boiled egg and rice or millet. Feel free to garnish with fresh parsley or cilantro and/or Togarashi.

Note: this makes enough soup for 2 adults and 2 young kids, with leftover for the next day's lunch for 2 adults. 
Another Note: Obviously, you don't have to make this for breakfast, you could eat for dinner too. Also, depending on your morning routine, it might be easiest to make it the night before and then reheat it in the morning. But be careful not let it boil after you've added the Miso because that will kill the beneficial probiotics.

Why Miso Soup? Miso is an incredibly healthy (and delicious) probiotic food. Soups in general are a great way to get kids to eat vegetables and the salty umami flavor appeals to kids. We generally make it with seaweed which has trace minerals including iodine which can be hard to get in other ways from our diet. We all also add ginger, turmeric, ginger to the soup which are great for the digestive, immune, and circulatory systems (to help keep us from getting sick). Adding some millet or rice adds some sustaining energy especially when you include the fats and proteins in a hard boiled egg.

It’s especially nice to start the day with warm soup in the winter, but we found that all summer long it’s a nice way to start the day and get the week off to a healthy start.

How we make it…

So, like most things we cook, we rarely measure them out once we’ve gotten into a groove. And also like many things we cook, we vary what gets put in by season (for instance this past week’s Miso Soup had summer squash and radishes but no carrots). But here’s the basic framework to riff off of:

Some of the ingredients we use…

Ingredients:

1 onion

Half head of garlic

2 tablespoons of chopped fresh ginger

1 Tablespoon of chopped fresh turmeric (if available)

1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper 

2 carrots

2 stalks of celery

3 Tablespoons olive or sesame oil

2 Tablespoons Tamari/soy sauce

1 Tablespoon Rice vinegar

+any additional veggies

3 quarts of water

1 sheet nori seaweed

3 Tablespoons Wakame seaweed

1 small peice of Kombu seaweed

2-3 leaves of kale chopped fine

3-4 Tablespoons of Miso

Directions:

Chop the onion and begin to saute in oil on medium heat. Once they begin to become translucent or brown a little add in the garlic, ginger, turmeric, and black pepper and reduce the heat a bit and stir for a few minutes. Add the Soy Sauce and Rice Vinegar, and saute for an additional few minutes before adding all of the chopped veggies. Let the veggies cook for a few minutes and then add water followed by seaweed, stir and let simmer for 10-15 minutes. 

Turn off the heat and add the miso. I find the most effective way is to take a strainer, and rub the miso paste through the strainer into the pot with a spoon. Serve hot with a hard boiled egg and rice or millet. Feel free to garnish with fresh parsley or cilantro and/or Togarashi.

Note: this makes enough soup for 2 adults and 2 young kids, with leftover for the next day's lunch for 2 adults. 
Another Note: Obviously, you don't have to make this for breakfast, you could eat for dinner too. Also, depending on your morning routine, it might be easiest to make it the night before and then reheat it in the morning. But be careful not let it boil after you've added the Miso because that will kill the beneficial probiotics.

Enjoy!