$3.68 / Serving - Japanese Suimono Soup

When you want to get cheap and healthy, you
can't do better than Japanese food. Traditionally
following ancient Buddhist teachings forbidding
the consumption of red meat and poultry, most
Japanese dishes tend to be high in vitamins and
minerals while staying low in cholesterol, focusing
on seasonal fruits and vegetables, and seafood. 

Today's recipe is a clear vegetable soup with a
smoked tuna and seaweed soup base, called
suimono. Vegetables aren't limited to what I've
included in this recipe. Feel free to use any
vegetables matching your preference! 

Cost Breakdown

$3.68 per serving

Step 1 - Making the Seasoning, or the "Tare"

Here are the 3 basic ingredients we'll need for making the seasoning that is the prime source of saltiness that we'll be flavoring the soup with.

1) Soy Sauce - Stick with the Japanese kind. 

2) Cooking Sake - salted rice wine

3) Mirin - this a sweet alcoholic wine

4) Water or your favorite broth - not pictured, but use your imagination!

In order of listing, with a 4:1:1:8 ratio, combine the ingredients into a pot and reduce by at least 50%. The more you reduce the liquid, the stronger tasting the resulting solution will be. Take care not to burn the reduction! In my example, I used Campbell's chicken stock. 

Step 2 - Prep the Vegetables (while the tare is reducing) 

This step is pretty ad-hoc. Use as much or as little of whatever vegetables you like (ie: the cheapest, chopped into whatever sized chunks you want to. Ideally, the pieces should be bite sized. In my recipe, I used enoki mushroom, Asian radish, carrot, firm tofu and kamaboko fish cake.

Step 3 - Simmer All The Things!!

Take your prepped vegetables and place them in a pot of hot dashi. Dashi is a Japanese soup stock made from blanched Kombu seaweed, and dried tuna flakes. You can buy instant dashi powder, and add it to hot water for instant dashi. As for making dashi from scratch, I will be uploading the recipe here shortly! 

Once your vegetables are in the hot dashi, crank the heat up until you achieve a rolling boil. Once the rolling boil is achieved, immediately lower the heat to a low simmer and leave for 10-15 minutes, or until the carrot and radish reach desired tenderness. 

While the soup is simmering, gradually add the tare reduction, ONE SPOONFUL AT A TIME, until desired saltiness is reached. The reason I stress that the seasoning should be added gradually is because this reduction is very strong. I made the mistake of adding too much seasoning (by the ladle) and ended up with strong tasting soup and a grumpy face. 

Step 4 - Assemble and Serve

Ladle the soup into a serving bowl and garnish with some chopped green onion. Enjoy!