Not Quite the Regular Miso Soup, It's Tonjiru Time (豚汁)

Tonjiru, not quite the regular miso soup, but you can think of it as an elaborated version with more veggies and pork. I really enjoyed this recipe, and love the pictures so much, I even swapped out my all-time Facebook page cover photo with it, definitely worth a try.

Tonjiru 豚汁 -

Ingredients (for a big pot)?

• 435 grams daikon
• 350 grams carrot
• 200 grams konjac
• 20 pork slices (pork belly slices preferred)
• 1 skinny burdock root
• 1 stalk scallion
• 9 tablespoons mixed miso (pale white/yellowish kind)
• 1 tablespoon white sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 10 cups light Japanese stock or plain hot water

How?

I made the Japanese stock this time, you can refer to my past chawamushi recipe to see how the stock was made. However, plain hot water works, some also seek help from Japanese dashi powder instead.

Peel and slice the daikon into quarter-circle shape, do the same for carrot. Peel and grate the ginger. Destem and chop the scallion. Cut the pork slices into shorter sections if needed, approximately few inches long for easy eating.

Prepare a big bowl and add in some water. Shave the burdock root into thinner pieces directly to the water, kind of like shaving a pencil or a spear. This can prevent the burdock root from over-coloring the soup later on. Its woody surface might appear tough, but there's no need to remove it as long as you shave it thin enough.

Slice konjac into smaller and shorter pieces, transfer to a medium pot filled with water. Bring to a boil, drain, then set aside for later use.

Prepare a big soup pot, drizzle in about 1 tablespoon of white sesame oil and turn to medium high heat. Add in pork slices and stir-fry for about one minute.

Add in sliced daikon, carrot, drained burdock root, and drained konjac. Mix and stir-fry for about a minute.

Pour in prepared stock or hot water. Also add in 1 teaspoon of grated ginger. Give it a stir. Bring to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer. During the simmering process, scoop out any dirty brown bits if any floating on the surface, check once a while.

Blend in miso and keep cooking, about 20 minutes. It's better to add miso in few batches in case the soup gets too salty, remember to taste along the way.

Scoop the soup to serving bowls and sprinkle some chopped scallion.

Mixing miso paste to the soup can take some extra work. What I do is that I transfer some miso to the ladle and let it slowly melt away close to the surface of the soup. Let the miso in contact with the hot soup while using a smaller spoon to "crush" the miso into finer bits. Just be careful not letting the whole chunk of miso drop into the soup, it'll be hard to know if all the miso has been blended with the soup evenly.

The texture is more rounded-out compared to plain miso soup, I guess the pork slices has something to do with it. Quite nutritious too with all that veggies used, especially burdock root. Hope you enjoy such soul-warming soup as much as I do.



Other soup recipes:

• Creamy corn soup
• Sun-dried and salt-aged radish soup 陳年蘿蔔干燉雞湯