My Eggplant Miso Soup Might Beat Tonjiru on a Hot Day

A quiet bowl with a lot going on. Silky eggplant, chewy aburaage, sharp myoga and a broth that tastes like more work than it was. Eggplant miso soup, start with the pan cold. Julienne one myoga and drop it into cold water for a few minutes to soften its bite. Myoga is a type of Japanese ginger and it tastes nothing like the ginger root you might be picturing. If you cannot find it, grate a small amount of fresh ginger and slice up some green onions instead. Between them, you get the brightness and freshness that myoga brings on its own. Stack four shiso leaves, roll them into a tube and cut them into thin ribbons. Slice two sheets of aburaage into thin strips. Aburaage is deep fried tofu sewed in flat sheets and it earns its place in two ways. It gives you something chewy to bite against all that soft eggplant and oil it lets go during cooking gets soaked right back up by the nasi. Lastly, cut 100 grams of eggplant in half crosswise then slice each half lengthwise into four sticks. Go for eight thinner ones if you prefer. What matters is that every stick comes up the same thickness. Now, pour one tablespoon of cooking oil into a frying pan that is still cold. Then add eggplant and aburaage. Do not turn the heat on yet. Toss everything gently until every single piece carries a thin even coat of oil. A cold pan is what buys you the time to do that. Once the oil is hot, you're already cooking and half your eggplant goes in there. Turn the sticks skin side down and set the heat to medium. Press them down gently with your chopsticks so the skin makes full contact with the pan. Fry for one to two minutes and look at the skin while it goes. When it turns glossy and the flesh underneath looks slightly translucent, flip them. Give the cut sides a brief moment then pull the pan off the heat. That glossy skin is your signal and the eggplant is done here. Pour 500 milliliters dashi, the Japanese stock, into a saucepan and bring it up to almost boiling over medium-high heat. Homemade dashi packets are my current standard and that video is on the card. Instant granules will technically work but I treat them as a last resort rather than go-to. Transfer the eggplant and aburaage into the hot dashi and simmer for one to two minutes. They're already most of the way there from the pan so all they need now is to finish. The less time eggplant spends sitting in liquid, the more color stays where you want it. And if you want a more substantial bowl, cubed tofu goes in right here, alongside eggplant and the aburaage. Turn the heat off, set a miso strainer down into the broth, add two tablespoons of asa miso and whisk inside the strainer until it loosens up. No strainer? No problem. Spoon a few tablespoons of the hot broth into a small heatproof bowl, whisk the miso into that until it's smooth and pour it back into the pot. Now taste it because this is the one part of the recipe I cannot write down for you. Salt runs from around 6% in the sweet misos up to around 12% in the salty ones so the same two tablespoons can land in two completely different plates depending on which tub is in your fridge. Add a little more at a time until it tastes right to you. There is no correct number here and anyone who gives you one is guessing. Ladle the eggplant and aburaage into your bowls first then pour the soup over them. Serve them with the myouga and the shiso piled on top. Drizzle a little toasted sesame oil into each one for the aroma. And this is my eggplant miso soup. This is what a summer inspired bowl looks like in 15 minutes. Make this tonight. Google eggplant miso soup sudachi for the full printable recipe with exact measurements and timing. Want even more delicious recipes? Grab my free cookbook from the link in the description. Okay let's go over the ingredients one more time and if you're ready to cook grab the written instructions by clicking the full recipe box with a picture that's about to pop up on your screen. Tap the recipe card on your screen for the full printable version with exact measurements, every timing and notes for getting each step right. Next time I'm making hankake spaghetti. See you then.