Let's Start with Dashi, a Japanese cooking stock.
About 4 cups water
About a 4 by 3 inches piece of dried seaweed (AKA kOMBU, Kelp)
A good handful of Bonito flakes. These are dried shaved fish, full of umami.
If you have time soak the Kombu in water overnight for best results.
If not, place the Kombu in a sauce pan with the water. On low heat, let it come up to a very gentle simmer for about 5 minutes.
Fish out the kombu and bring the water to a boil. Once it starts boiling turn of the heat and dump the Bonito flakes in.
Let that steep for about 10 minutes. At this point the flakes will sink to the bottom of the pan.
Strain that through a fine mesh or Cheese cloth.
That's your Dashi, you can keep that in the fridge for about a week. Use it as you would use chicken stock.
Use it to cook rice:
Use it to make noodle dishes
Now let's make the Soup.
For the soup I posted I used:
Salmon, cut into bite size chunks
Baby Bok Choy
Beech Mushrooms
Green onions
3 tablespoons miso paste (use less if you're using red miso paste). I normally mix red and white miso for a mild taste, more vesatile.
Additional tasty add-ons:
Sesame oil
soy sauce
Sambal Oalek for some heat, if your into that sort of thing.
First, bring your Dashi to a gently Simmer, drop the salmon in the Dashi and let it cook. Takes 2 to 3 minutes.
Fish it out and set aside.
Next dump the mushrooms and let them cook until slightly soft. Dump the bok choy and the white parts of green onions. Cook that for about a minute. Get the salmon back into the sauce pan.
Here is the key to miso soup: place about 2 tablespoon of miso paste in a small bowl or cup, take some other dashi from the sauce pan and whisk it with the miso. Once that's well mixed, dump it in the sauce pan and gently mix. Taste for seasoning, add more miso if you want to. Add some soy sauce if you please, add some sesame oil and serve.
Notice that there is no mention of salt because miso is salty on its own.
Once the miso is added turn off the heat. Never let miso boil in soup or any dish that you use it in.
Seems like a lot but it really takes 15 minutes if you already had the dashi.
Have miso soup as is or add anything you fancy.
