I had natto for lunch today. A lot of people back home were shocked when they found out I eat natto. It’s really not that awful, guys. Although I would admit that it’s an acquired taste. For me it took 5 years, while I did not hate it to begin with.

There was not much cooking for this meal, everything was straight forward. So I thought I share some quick tips on how to make Miso soup.

First is the choice of Miso. There aren’t many varieties of miso overseas but if you want to get some, go for white or mixed miso. Never ever get red miso.

Red miso has a strong and distinct taste, and is loved by some regions of Japan such as Nagoya. However, the miso soup that we are more accustomed to overseas is white miso soup. I would recommend mixed miso because it is more flavor full than white miso, but less aggressive than the red ones.

Another tip is to get miso that is premixed with fish and seaweed extract. The traditional way of making miso soup(as far as i know..) is to dissolve the miso in stock made from Katsuo fish flakes and Konbu seaweed. Nowadays, beside that it is hard to pull off, we don’t really have time for that, do we? So, get the premixed one.

Lastly is the proportion of water to miso. One bowl of standard miso soup is made from 150 ml of water + 12g of miso, and it would be perfect. Although it is ok to make it thicker, the concern would be the salt intake. 12g of miso paste has approximately 1.2g of salt while the recommended daily salt intake is around 6~7g. Which means that it is better to go below 2g of salt per meal if you are having three daily. I would rather spend the remaining quota on seasoning my other food 😀

Today’s lunch had 477 kcal.

I think for the next post I might share my recipe for mixed grain rice.