It has been a long time while since i made this.

This is my family’s version of Miso soup, where we use fatty salmon as stock base. Back in the days we would buy the cheap part of a salmon, those bones and head part for this dish. We would fry the fish before boiling, thus the soup always had quite decent amount of oil on the surface rich in the fragrance of salmon. Large amount of onion were also used to elevate the taste.

This is a simple dish to make. Onion and salmon pan-fried, pour in water and simmer until the onion softened, add in any vegetables or tofu, season to taste with small pinch of sugar and miso. If the miso is very mild add some salt.

Little did i know that salmon, well Syake actually, in miso soup is actually a Japanese dish. The small differences is they do not fry the fish. It is called Ishikari nabe, from Ishikari City in Hokkaido. I first had it when i travelled to Hokkaido for the snow festival around 7 years ago and that was one of my fond memories. Nothing beats a hot pot of soup with amazing local produce in deep winter. Especially for someone who is not a big fan of snowy winter like me.