How to Make Miso Soup for Breakfast

Jeannette Bessinger, author and nutrition educator, explains how to make miso soup for breakfast.

Hi I’m Jeanette, I’m with Balance for Life and we’re making healthy breakfast. Right now, we’re doing something a little bit unusual. We’re making a Miso Soup. That might not be too appealing to you at first but actually it’s a wonderful light and nourishing way to begin your diet. In the wintertime, in the colder months, it might be easier to think about having a soup. As you can see, we have some nice vegetable boiling away. It’s very, very simple to make. It actually just takes a couple of minutes and you can use whatever you happen to have in your larder. There are no fast and hard rules for making a miso soup. Any vegetables that sound like they would be tasty for you, it’s worth that you try. So think about using—if you’re making it just for yourself, think about using a cup, a cup and a half of water and about a cup of cut vegetables. In this version, we’ve taken some broccoli from the crown. We just made it a little bit smaller, put it in to bite size pieces, about like that. And actually we use a little bit of sweet potato. If you cube it into half inch squares, it cooks up very quickly. You’re going to need to give it seven or eight minutes if you do use a harder route vegetable like this but it’ll give a creamy, soft flavor which is really nice and sweet. You can add some onion if you wish to or you might add some lighter leaves. This is a colored leaf. And the quickest way to prepare for the soup is to cut out the heavy spine. You can actually dice this, it’s really got the concentrated amount of calcium and minerals are in here. You can dice into pieces like that. Take the actual leaf, fold it in on itself and roll it into a tube like a cigar. And then, you cut it into these little ribbons and you can leave the ribbons long or you can dice them into pieces. This cook up very, very quickly. Another possibility is to take a carrot and to use either a shredder or a grater and just grate some pieces in there quickly. So you add the harder vegetables first. The sweet potatoes will go in first. Give them five or six minutes. Then the carrot shreds, then the broccoli, and then the lightest, the leaves. So after you’ve got the whole mixture going, maybe seven or eight minutes if you’re using the harder ones. Just remove the lid, take your soup off the heat. You see how the broccoli is nice and bright, and the sweet potato is bright orange, that’s really what you’re looking for. When everything is tender crisp, pour it out into a bowl. And here’s the easiest part. This is a miso. It’s a fermented soybean paste, which makes it easier to digest the soy, which can be difficult for some people. It’s very salty and it’s got a very strong flavor. So a small amount goes along the way. For good--this is about a cup and a half of soup and vegetables you use around the tablespoon. Now you don’t want to cook it because it has live enzymes inside and that will kill them. So you put it into the hot water after the soup has already cooked. It takes a moment or two to dissolve and you can assist that process by just gently mashing and mixing it, and see how it comes up into this nice, rich color. This is very alkalizing for the system. It’ll set you up for the day with a lot of energy. If you prefer to use a lighter miso, that does have a less of a strong flavor. So start with a little bit, see if you like it, and you might find that soup makes a terrific breakfast. So that’s how we make our miso soup. Then we’re going to moving on. Next, we’re going to be doing an apple cheese pan baked.