For the dashi keep water and dried mushrooms to soak. If you have kombu seaweed, add that too. Keep soaking for at least 2 hours (we soaked 6 hours). If you are rushing, soak with warm water for 30 minutes.
2 Cup Water, 3 Dried Shiitake Mushroom, 1x1 Inch Kombu
When done soaking, discard mushrooms (and kombu if you added that earlier). Keep dashi on the stove top and heat up.
The dashi will form foam. Skim foam with a fine mesh.
Add soy sauce, sugar, and salt to the dashi and combine while it's still cooking.
1 Teaspoon Soy Sauce, 1 Teaspoon Sugar, ½ Teaspoon Salt
Reduce heat completely or take from the heat when it's bubbling and stir in the miso paste. Mix paste into your hot misoshiru soup.
1 Tablespoon Miso Paste
Take miso soup from the heat, garnish with sliced green onion stalks and serve hot.
Green Onions
Video
Notes
You can use ready-made dashi too and skip the 6 hours soaking time. OR prep the dashi in a larger batch in advance.
You can add kombu, it's optional. The recipe video doesn't include kombu. Kombu with shiitake is a great combination and gives a lot of flavor to the soup. To use the kombu, just take it once through running water and add to the water with the mushrooms.
Use red or white miso paste or mixed. If you are using a high quality flavorful miso, you won't need to add the soy sauce, sugar, and salt. Never boil the miso paste or else it will change the flavor of your soup. Add at the end so that the miso paste won't get accidentally boiled.
You can choose to add more ingredients during the cooking process (but before the miso past is added, fermented paste always at the end), such as tofu, vegetables, meats, seafood. See post for ideas.
The servings are small Japanese sized bowls. Two of these Japanese servings equal 1 large serving in the West.