This easy Miso Meat Sauce (Niku Miso) is a tasty, savory-sweet side dish of ground meat seasoned with fermented soybean paste, mirin, and aromatics. Try it on steamed rice and noodles or in a lettuce wrap. As a bonus, it‘s meal-prep friendly! {vegan/vegetarian adaptable}
Since I love steamed rice, I always look for tasty small side dishes that can round up the meal. We call these small dishes “Gohan no Okazu” (ご飯のおかず), meaning a side dish to accompany rice. They bring substance and so much more satisfaction to a plain bowl of rice. A delicious example is this humble yet versatile Miso Meat Sauce (Niku Miso 肉味噌).
What is Miso Meat Sauce and How to Make It?
Miso Meat Sauce is braised ground meat seasoned with miso and we serve it more like a side dish or condiment to flavor the meal. In Japanese, we call this dish Niku Miso (肉味噌); Niku means ‘meat’ in Japanese and miso is Japanese fermented soybean paste.
It’s as simple as cooking the meat with seasonings. For a nice aroma and flavor, you have the option of adding ginger, garlic, and green onions. The type of miso you use, whether it’s red miso or awase miso, will lend a slightly different flavor profile to the sauce. For example, Miso Meat Sauce with white miso has a sweeter and milder taste while the one with red miso has a saltier and strong taste.
You may wonder why we need to sweeten this dish. Well, sugar and/or mirin play a key role in Japanese cooking as they balance out the saltiness from seasoning like miso.
The Miso Meat Sauce is usually on the sweeter side (savory-sweet, not dessert sweet) than a salty side, but feel free to adjust. It is meant to accompany bland or neutral-tasting food such as steamed rice or lettuce. Therefore, it’s recommended to use a stronger seasoning, which also helps to preserve the dish for longer storage.
Miso Meat Sauce Variations
This recipe is rather straightforward and everyone makes it slightly differently to their liking. How do I make this simple dish so versatile? It’s easy!
1. Use different types of miso
You are probably aware; that there are many different types of miso. Each company also makes miso differently. By switching up the miso, you would get different-tasting meat sauce each time. I’ve been using different miso from Hikari Miso® for over a decade and I’ll explain a bit more below.
2. Use different types of meat
Ground pork and ground beef are typically used in the dish, but you can also use ground chicken, ground turkey, or cubed firm tofu.
3. Add aromatics
To add more depth of flavors, you can incorporate common aromatics in Japanese cooking such as ginger, garlic, green onions, yuzu kosho, and etc. Use whatever you like.
4. Include add-ins to bulk up the volume
If your children don’t like eating vegetables or mushrooms, you have a good opportunity to sneak them in! The meat sauce makes a great dish to bind vegetables in a subtle way. Finely mince carrots, eggplants, zucchini, or shiitake mushrooms similar to ground meat size, and cook them all together. My recommendation is to add a small portion and increase the amount once the kids are grown to eating vegetables with the sauce. 😉
How to Enjoy Miso Meat Sauce
Miso Meat Sauce is considered as a side dish, rather than the main dish because it is not eaten alone, but with rice, noodles, or substitution like a lettuce wrap.
- Rice – steamed rice, fried rice, filling for rice ball (onigiri) or onigirazu
- Noodles – cook with stir-fried noodles or pasta, topping for udon/soba/somen noodle soup
- Bread – a sandwich and burger spread along with sliced cucumbers and lettuce
- Others – lettuce wrap (see above), an add-on to a vegetable stir fry, and more!
Bonus tip: Serve the Miso Meat Sauce with a fried egg, soft-boiled egg, Onsen Tamago, or Ramen Egg (Ajitsuke Tamago). Everything tastes better with a creamy egg! For extra color and crunch, serve with julienned cucumbers and carrots.
Miso Recommendation
To make this Miso Meat Sauce, I used Enjuku Koji Miso from Hikari Miso®. Koji miso includes a higher percentage of koji and as a result, this miso has the natural sweetness of the koji and the umami with a rich fragrance.
Where can I buy Hikari Miso® miso?
- Japanese grocery stores (Nijiya, Mitsuwa, Marukai, local mom-pop shops, etc)
- Asian grocery stores (including Chinese/Korean grocery stores)
- Some miso products on Amazon
Ideal Side Dish for Meal Prep!
What I like most about the Miso Meat Sauce is that we can make it ahead so it’s ideal for weekly meal prep. Because the meat is strongly seasoned for storage purposes, it can be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week! I often make it on the weekend for kids’ school lunches or my quick lunch.
When you’re ready to eat, all you need to do is reheat the amount you need in the microwave or the frying pan. This all-purpose Miso Meat Sauce has saved us on countless busy weekdays!
Wish to learn more about Japanese cooking? Sign up for our free newsletter to receive cooking tips & recipe updates! And stay in touch with me on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram.
All-Purpose Miso Meat Sauce (Niku Miso)
Ingredients
- 1 knob ginger (1 inch, 2.5 cm)
- ½ Tokyo negi (naga negi; long green onion) (you can use 2 green onions/scallions)
- 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
- ¾ lb ground pork (or use ground beef, ground chicken, or ground turkey; for vegan/vegetarian, use cubed firm tofu)
- 4 Tbsp miso
- 2 Tbsp sugar
For the Seasonings
- 3 Tbsp mirin
- 3 Tbsp sake
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 2 Tbsp water
- 2 tsp potato starch or cornstarch
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
- Grate 1 knob ginger. Chop ½ Tokyo negi (naga negi; long green onion) into small rounds.
- In a bowl, combine the seasonings: 3 Tbsp mirin, 3 Tbsp sake, and 1 Tbsp soy sauce.
- Add 2 Tbsp water and 2 tsp potato starch or cornstarch. Mix it all together until everything is well combined.
To Cook the Niku Miso
- Heat a saucepan or frying pan over medium heat. When it’s hot, add 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil and the chopped negi. Coat the negi with the oil until fragrant.
- Add ¾ lb ground pork and break up the meat with a spatula.
- Add the grated ginger and cook the meat until no longer pink.
- Add 4 Tbsp miso and 2 Tbsp sugar. Combine well.
- Add the seasonings and cook on medium-low heat.
- When the cooking liquid is reduced to your liking, turn off the heat. You can leave more or less sauce depending on how you want to use the Niku Miso. Transfer to a bowl or container. Serve hot along with steamed rice, noodles, or lettuce cups (see the post for ideas).
To Store
- You can keep it in the refrigerator for up to one week. Reheat only the portion you will serve. You can also freeze it up to 3–4 weeks.
Made this today and the whole family loves it. Will be making it again 🙂 I used 1lb ground pork and kept all seasonings the same amount and it was a little too salty for our taste, even as a side dish. So I’ll try with less miso next time. But this is definitely a keeper recipe. Thanks Nami!
Hi Juliana! I’m so glad to hear your whole family enjoy this recipe! I hope you will enjoy this meat sauce on different dishes! Thank you for your kind feedback!
I love your recipes! I grew up in Hokkaido and your recipes bring back my great memories.
Hi Ami! Thank you so much! How nice to grow up in Hokkaido… it was my mom and my dream to move to Hokkaido because we love there. Thank you for your kind feedback!
This was great! Instead of meat, I used crumbled TVP. Also used 1 Tbsp miso instead of 4 and 1 Tbsp of sugar instead of 2. I let all the ingredients re-hydrate the TVP.
I didn’t have any scallions, so I finely chopped some kale and stir fried it all into the mix.
Was fantastic! Making this again and again! Thank you!
Hi Dorothy! I’m so happy to hear you enjoyed this recipe! Thank you for sharing your tip. I’m sure other people will find it helpful!
I am completely new to any kind of Japanese cooking and this was a simple and delicious recipe! I was afraid that with four tablespoons of miso it would be two salty but it’s perfectly seasoned and absolutely tasty!
Hi Julia! I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you for your kind feedback. 🙂
Nami, I’ve been following your recipes for a while now and I’m so grateful for all your consistently tasty recipes!
I gave this recipe a try earlier this Sunday afternoon and I must say it was a joy to make (and eat!). Lots of flavours throughout the cooking process, I even added a leftover half of capsicum I had in hand and the flavours blended in really nicely.
Agree with some of the comments here, flavours are on the strong side (I used white miso) and was especially salty for me. Will probably cut down on the miso and sugar next try.
I ate this with green lettuce and used it (sparingly) as a dressing!
Hi Helena! Thank you for your kind feedback and I’m happy to hear you enjoy my recipes! Hope you can adjust the saltiness next time. Thank you for your kind feedback. 🙂
i havent made it but it appears your instructions are incomplete. I think i can figure it out but maybe others with less cook experience can not
Hi LK! Which instruction was unfinished?
Thanks as always Nami. Looks like I have my weekend dinner plans all set!
Hi Agnes! Hope you enjoy the recipe!
So I made the recipe the other day. I used white miso and beef for mine. I found it was much oilier than I expected and needed to get rid of a lot of the oil on the surface. Otherwise the recipe was great! The texture somewhat reminds me of the Taiwanese Lu Rou Fan (braised pork rice) dish but with a miso flavour. Thanks Nami, I’m definitely remaking this recipe soon but I’ll try using pork next.
Hi Agnes! Probably the ground beef you used has higher fat % and the oil just melted and came out from the meat. Next time this happened, you can dab the oil with a paper towel (same for pork, if you use higher fat %). I love Lu Rou Fan!!! Thank you for trying this recipe! xoxo
I tried this recipe tonight and increase the recipe by 100% but dropped the miso amount by half. I used organic low sodium miso. I left out the sugar as we are all trying to cut out sugar in our diet. The recipe is really yummy and super easy to do but it was really salty. I suggest maybe to start the miso levels cautiously and add more as needed later. I was using premium brew soysauce. Maybe that’s also possibly a reason for the saltiness.
Thanks so much for sharing this.
Hi Faye! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! If you don’t include sugar, you probably need something to counterbalance the saltiness from miso and soy sauce. Without adding some kind of sweetener, it would end up with just a salty food. Also, each miso has different saltiness (white miso is less salty) and each brand makes miso with different salt level (even same white miso), so it’s good to know your miso’s characteristics too if you are trying to cut down on sugar. What do you normally use to counterbalance saltiness?
I usually really try to remove it completely but if I really have to use it, I will use coconut sugar. I’ll test it again with coconut sugar the next time I cook this recipe.
Let me know how it goes! I’m sure there are many readers who appreciate your feedback. Thanks so much for trying this recipe again!
Will try this with meatless meat for a vegan meal..
Hi Amy! Hope you enjoy this recipe! Let us know how the meatless meat version worked! 🙂
Tried it and we loved it
Hi Yvonne! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! I’m so happy you enjoyed it. Thanks for your kind feedback. 🙂 ox
How big a knob of ginger?
Hi Randy! It’s like 1 inch-ish with skin-on? Thickness varies, too. Ginger or any aromatics can be really up to your liking. 🙂
Hi Nami, can i use negi miso here? Any changes to the recipe especially the seasoning? Thank u!
Hi Siew! Do you mean you want to add negi miso instead of miso? If you want to add meat to negi miso, then I would add miso in the negi miso recipe. I wouldn’t suggest to mix these two different sauce. 🙂
Hi Nami
Thank you for the lovely recipe.
I have a question – did you use young or old ginger in the recipe?
In general, when do we use young and old ginger?
Thanks!
Hi B! Here, we can barely find young ginger unless it’s in season, and still, we rarely see it. It’s available only in the summertime. Anyway, I use old ginger which is available all year round. Hope you enjoy the recipe!
this was spot on from a dish I enjoy at my favorite Japanese restaurant. I made this and put on top of thick slices of pan fried eggplant. Out of this world! Also I used ground chicken and I even processed the cooked meat a bit to just add textured instead of it being super chunky.
Hi Cassie, Thank you very much for trying this recipe and sharing your cooking experience with us! We are so happy to hear you enjoyed this sauce!
I suppose this would also be a good way to finish off left-over steak or roast, but grinding and then using the flavoring ingredients and a quick sautée to heat it up.
Hi Frank! I would cook (leftover) raw meat for this, instead of cooked leftover meat. 🙂 Hope you enjoy!
Hi Nami! This recipe looks great. I’m trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat, is there any recommendation for a veggie combo or maybe tofu to go in instead of meat for this dish? Thanks!
Hi Emma! I mentioned about mixing with veggies and mushrooms in the post. I think shiitake mushrooms (or really, any mushrooms), carrots, onions, zucchinis, eggplants… any veggeies would work, but cut them into small pieces. 🙂
But is better to add the veggies before the meat (with oil and negi) or with the meat?
Hello Otome! Onions can go first with negi. Add the meat to cook 80-90%. Then add hard veggies such as carrots. Then any soft ingredients like mushrooms. Hope that helps!
Hi Nami. Thanks for another great looking recipe. A couple quick questions: Does this freeze well? And would substituting 3 more tbsp of mirin for the sake and sugar work?
Hi L! Thank you! 1) YES! I recommend freezing! If you make a lot, I would divide it into a few containers so you don’t have to defrost all at once. 2) Because sake and sugar are separately used, 2 Tbsp of mirin seems a bit too much. If you don’t have sake (or dry sherry or Chinese rice wine), I’d suggest using water for this recipe. 🙂