Japanese Onion Mushroom Soup Recipe

🧅 Ingredients

Here is an overview of what you will need to make your own Japanese clear onion soup.

The exact US and metric measurements are located in the printable recipe card below the how-to instructions.

• White Onions — aka sweet onion
• Green Onions aka Spring Onion — bulbs and green stalks
• Shiitake Mushrooms — You can use dried shiitake mushroom, fresh mushrooms or even canned mushrooms. I recommend dried mushrooms because they add more umami than fresh or canned mushrooms.
• Ginger — fresh
• Garlic Cloves — fresh
• Beef Broth
• Water
• Soy Sauce — Kikkoman style is preferred, but also mushroom soy sauce is great.
• Black Pepper Ground
• Salt — to taste (optional)

🥣 How to prep dried mushrooms for this soup?

If you intend to use dried shiitake mushrooms in this soup (as I did) instead of fresh ones, then you can do the following:

1. Rinse your mushroom and place into a bowl with about 1 ¼ cup or 300 milliliter Water.
2. Let the mushrooms soak for at least 30 minutes.
3. Take out the mushrooms from the liquid and just rinse them once again with clean water. Squeeze the mushroom to take out excess water.
4. Reserve the mushroom water because you can use that + 300 ml instead of the 600 ml of water in the recipe. The mushroom water adds a umami flavor to the soup.

🔪 How to make this soup?

Prep your fresh ingredients.

Slice your white onion, green onions and mushrooms. Chop your ginger and garlic.

Step 2

Sauté white onion slices, green onion bulbs (reserve the green onion stalks for the garnish), ginger, garlic, and mushrooms in some oil.

Step 3

Pour in beef broth, water, and season with soy sauce, black pepper and salt.

Step 4

Simmer for 10–15 minutes over a medium heat setting.

Step 5

Garnish just before serving with the green cut onion stalks and serve hot.

💡 Variation Ideas

You can add any of the following ingredients, or switch out ingredients, to the soup to simmer along.

• Other veggies such as celery, leek, carrot, and parsnip. You can clean out your fridge that way.
• Scallion.
• White button mushrooms instead of shiitake.
• Chicken Broth instead of beef broth, if that is what you have in your pantry.

🍴 Serving

Enjoy this Japanese onion soup as a light meal for lunch with a salad at the side, such as a daikon radish salad and some bread.

You can also serve this soup as they do in hibachi restaurants as a starter. The soup goes really well with the main course, such as a beef steak, or serve it up as a sushi starter.

You can add a topping too, such as rayu chili oil to add some heat or a soft-boiled half egg.

🍱 Storing

Store leftovers in an airtight container with a lid. I like to use a rectangular oven and a freezer-safe glass container for that.

That way, you can pop the soup into the oven or microwave to reheat, or you can add it to your meal prep rotation by storing the container in your freezer.

📕 What is this soup?

Japanese onion soup with mushrooms is a common soup served in hibachi restaurants across the North American continent as a starter meal, as the soup is a clear broth and light onion soup.

This clear Asian onion souo is also known as a miyabi soup in hibachi restaurants.

The purpose of the soup is to prepare the stomach for the rest of the meal to come, which is usually heavier in nature and contains meat such as beef steaks.

Some Hibachi establishments skip the mushrooms all together to make it more like a French onion soup (minus the cheese and flour).

Yet, the Japanese onion soup is not a traditional dashi miso-based soup but uses a beef broth instead.

The ingredients in this Japanese onion soup are all inspired by the various Japanese regional onion and mushroom soup varieties. It is definitely not a traditional Japanese onion or mushroom soup, but rather a western style Japanese inspired soup.

You will love this Japanese onion soup if you are not a fan of miso soups or if you like light Asian inspired meals which have a western touch to it.