Pork and Vegetable Miso Soup (Tonjiru 豚汁) 五花肉片蔬菜汤
An easy, colorful, and savory soup with pork and root vegetables. Packed with an nutritions, vitamins, and flavor.
Equipment
- 6" or 8" sauce pan
- 10" sauce pan
Ingredients
- 10-12 oz sliced pork belly
- 2 pieces medium-sized carrot
- 1 pack yam cake (konnyaku) (about 9 oz)
- 8-10 oz daikon radish
- 6-9 pieces fresh shiitake mushroom
- 0.5 stem leek or Japanese long green onion
- 1 tsp oil
- 1-2 tsp salt
- 2-3 tbsp miso
- 0.5 cup dried bonito flakes (optional, could be replaced by dashi powder)
Instructions
- Peel the daikon radish and carrots. Gently rinse shiitake mushroom to remove dirt. Clean the leek.
- Cut the mushrooms to small chunks (one mushroom to 4 pieces). Cut the whole radish into two pieces, and cut each half into 1/8 inch slices. Cut the carrots and leek into 1/8 inch slices too.
- Rinse the yam cake and cut it into either chunks (like the mushroom chunks) or slices (like radish slices)
- Cut the pork belly slices to 1x2" pieces
- To the 6" (or 8") sauce pan, add 5-6 cups of cold water. And heat to boiling. Add the dried bonito flakes, and let it simmer at low heat for 2-3 mins. Use a fork or chop stick to remove most bonito flakes. This is called dashi soup.
- Put the 10" sauce pan on stove top, and turn heat to high. Once the pan becomes hot, add oil and pork slices. Cook until grease comes out of the pork fat. Turn to low heat, and cook until lean pork turns brown. Use a spoon to scoop the excess amount of grease/fat.
- Add mushroom, radish, carrots, and yam cake pieces to the pan with pork. Pour the dashi soup into the pan too. Add the salt and turn heat to high. Once boiling, remove the scum. Turn heat to low, and simmer for 20 mins.
- Add the leek pieces. Simmer for 2-3 mins. Turn off heat, add the miso paste and mix well.
- Adjust taste with salt, and serve with other dishes.
Video
Notes
-The dashi soup could be made by adding dashi powder to hot water.
-Instead of filtering the dashi soup, I removed most of the bonito flakes before pouring to the other pan.
-I like to remove grease from pork fat as much as possible. Thus, I cooked the pork pieces until they turned brown.
-Some people may not like the order in yam cake. Boiling the yam pieces before cooking them with other ingredients would reduce the odor.
-Add miso right before serving. Don't let the miso soup boil as it would loses its flavor.