Halloween is here and I turn another year older. I can’t help but reflect on life a bit so bear with me. As I write this post, I think about how much my blog has grown since I started blogging last year. I’m sincerely thankful for my family, friends, and readers for your love and support.
Throughout a day I receive kind messages from readers giving me feedback on the food they cooked using my recipes. There are many recipes to choose from out there, but you trusted mine and gave it a try. These kind messages keep me going and have been the source of my fundamental strength to keep my blog alive. So thank you, thank you for making my life a little more meaningful everyday. 🙂
Today I’d like to share one of my favorite miso soup, Clam Soup (あさりの味噌汁; Asari Miso Soup).
When I make my clam miso soup, I like to use kombu dashi instead of my regular dashi stock. The umami from kombu matches perfectly with the delicious essence coming from clam stock. It feels like an oceanic culinary experience. I also suggest using nothing but clams as ingredients – no tofu or wakame seaweed. That’s just my personal preference, but if you like to enjoy clam miso soup, you do not want to mix up the delicate clam flavor with other ingredients.
I hope you will give this easy miso soup a try. Happy Halloween and have fun trick-or-treating!
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- ½ lb Manila clams (½ lb = 200 g)
- 2 cups water (2 cups = 500 ml)
- 2 inch kombu (dried kelp) (2" = 5 cm) (optional, see Notes)
- 2 Tbsp miso (I use awase miso)
- 1 green onion/scallion
- 2 cups water
- 1 Tbsp salt (kosher or sea salt; use half if using table salt)
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Gather all the ingredients.
- De-grit clams (Read my How To page for details and complete process). Even though they are “ready to use”, I highly recommend doing this process. Here’s a quick version. Add 1 Tbsp. salt in 2 cups water. Place a sieve in the bowl so that any sand and grit the clam purge would stay on the bottom of the bowl instead of being consumed by the clams again.
- Place the clams inside the sieve without overlapping each other. The water level should be right around the clam’s mouth. If there isn’t enough salt water, make more using the same ratio of water and salt. Cover with aluminum foil (to make it dark) and leave it in a cool place for 2 hours. This should give clams enough time to purge sand and grit.
- Wash the clams carefully with a brush. Clams are now ready to use.
- Gently clean the dashi kombu with a damp cloth (DO NOT WASH) but leave the white powdery substances which contribute to the umami flavor in the stock.
- Put clams, water, and dashi kombu in a pot and bring it to a boil over high heat.
- When boiling, reduce heat to low.
- Skim off scum and here’s how I do it. Prepare a cup/bowl of water and a fine mesh strainer and scoop off scum. Dip the strainer in water to clean while scooping.
- Turn off the heat immediately after clams are all open. Remove the dashi kombu.
- Add miso 1 Tbsp. at a time. Each brand of miso has different saltiness so adjust accordingly.
- If you do not have a miso strainer, use a ladle and dissolve miso in there so you can make sure all the miso paste are dissolve before adding more.
- When you are ready to serve, heat up miso soup, but DO NOT BOIL miso soup (because it will lose the miso flavor). Serve in miso soup bowl and sprinkle chopped green onion.
Kombu (dried kelp): If you don't have dashi kombu, you can omit; however the flavor will lack nice umami from kombu.
Preparation time is not including the time for de-gritting clams.
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe in your own words and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
