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!
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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.
I’m planning on making a version of this for my wife, who is a vegetarian. how should this be prepared when substituting tofu? would you sauté it first like the ground meat, or add it with the seasonings to keep it soft and let it soak up the sauce?
Hi Jameson! Thank you very much for trying Nami’s recipe!
To substitute with Tofu, we recommend draining the water from Tofu thoroughly before sauté it with the green onion so that the tofu texture will be close to meat. Please refer to the “To prepare Tofu” instruction on this linked recipe; https://www.justonecookbook.com/chrysanthemum-greens-and-tofu-salad/.
You can also substitute with shiitake mushrooms! We hope this helps!
Wow myself and my family absolutely loved this recipe.
So full of flavour! I found it almost addicting. Lol and I didn’t share left overs! Lol
The only change I had made was I used ground beef instead of pork.
This looks like a once a week fave for the family. Thank you ❤️
Hi BB! Thank you very much for trying this recipe with ground beef and for the feedback!
We are glad to hear it turned out flavourful and your family enjoyed it! Thank you!💕
This is hands down the most versatile recipe! Thank you for sharing it. I have made it over a dozen times various ways and all have turned out great. Sign of a great recipe. This last time I actually used venison (fresh caught deer from my property) and I was shocked at the great flavor. Thanks for making this recipe a new staple in my home!
Hi Cass, Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback! We are so happy to hear you enjoyed the sauce in many dishes.☺️
wow! Deer what a gourmet must be!
What would be a good thing to replace sake with in this recipe? I can’t use any alcohol when cooking it. Thanks!
Hi Emily,
You may replace it with Dashi for this recipe.
We hope this helps!
I’ve been making this recipe for a couple of months now and just wanted to say how much I love it! It’s the perfect quick and easy weeknight dinner, and so adaptable to whatever I might have in the fridge. I like to throw in fresh shiitakes or shimeji mushrooms, spinach or cabbage. I think I used kale once. A couple of times I had leftover kabocha and I threw that in, too. Super yummy, convenient and healthy dinner for the family. Thank you!
Hi Jennifer!
Yay!👏🏻 That is called All-Purpose Miso Meat Sauce!😆
Thank you very much for trying this recipe and sharing your cooking experience with us!
We are so happy to hear you found many ways to enjoy this sauce!!!
I might not have access to negi, and I might have accidentally put in double the soy sauce because I misremembered the ratios, but this meat sauce is still amazing. Made up a first batch and put it over rice, and both me and my partner loved it. For some context, they felt pretty ill and very hungry today, so I decided it’d be a good opportunity to make up a bunch of recipes I’ve had my eye on (we’ve had frozen mince for some time that we haven’t known what to do with; never going to have that problem again!). They even mentioned they reckon it’d go well with carrots; very sharp, that one.
Plus, this recipe very neatly cleaned out my first miso tub; another milestone!
Definitely looking forward to making it up with the correct quantities (it is notably salty, which is not surprising, but still great) and applying it in more interesting ways than just put over rice. I find myself wondering how it’d go as a topping for pasta along with the soy milk/soy sauce/miso pasta sauce that’s kicking around elsewhere on here…
…it’s possible I’m just a huge fan of miso now. I got into the stuff on here out of a desire to make udon, but I am in no way unhappy with this unexpected turn of events. Gonna have to try out the miso ginger pork at some point, among other things.
Hi DC!
Thank you for trying this recipe!
If you can’t find Negi in your area, you may use green onions/scallions, as mentioned in the recipe card. It will give you more flavor to this dish than without it.
You can check out “How to Enjoy Miso Meat Sauce” in this post for other ideas for using this sauce. Enjoy!
Lovely! I mentioned before that I have become addicted to your blog. This recipe is another wonderful discovery. I know this will become one of my go-to dishes. I have to admit I replaced the pork with chicken thigh I roughly ground in the food processor and on the second day I added some shitake (used the rehyration liquid when I reheated). Lovely! Thank you so much again!
Hi Afra!
Thank you very much for trying many of Nami’s recipes and sharing your cooking experience with us!
We are so glad to hear you enjoyed Nami’s recipe very much! Thank you.😊
I made this for dinner tonight with ground turkey and zucchini. Absolutely delicious and a great simple meal.
Hi Andi!
Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for sharing your cooking experience with us!
We are so happy to hear that this Miso Meat Sauce worked very well with ground turkey and zucchini!😋
I make a similarly seasoned ground beef dish, with enough shiro miso mixture to have the meat stay clumped together. Place a layer on top of pan fried, thick slices of a large eggplant. Then place under the broiler to carmelize and lightly brown. I freeze portions in Tupperware containers to quickly reheat for later suppers. Serve with gohan.
Hi Suzy,
It sounds yummy!😋
Thank you for sharing your cooking experience and tips with us!
So much umami flavor! Thank you for this recipe, my husband and I fully enjoyed it.
Hi Stephanie,
You have no idea how much your kind feedback meant to us!
Thank you for trying this recipe. 🙂
My first Japanese cooking ever! This was so tasty and the family loved it, addictive! Thank you!
Hi Juana! I’m so happy to hear you enjoyed this recipe! Thank you for your kind feedback! 🙂
So delicious, sweet and a hint of saltiness! I used tamari in place of soy sauce, was worry it might turn out to be too salty, but it tasted great. The sauce consistency was good as well, it kept the meat together sitting on top of my rice. Paired this with a simple stir fry spinach (not baby spinach). Simple and hearty meal, thanks Nami!
Hi Jenny! Thanks so much for trying this recipe! I’m so happy to hear you liked it and what a wonderful meal you made!! 😀
This is so delicious and so easy to make! Will easily become a staple at my place on weekdays.
I used red miso and I used 2.5 tablespoons of it. Next time, I think I will use 1 or 2 tablespoons. I was using low sodium soy sauce but still felt too salty for me.
Hi Amy! Thank you so much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback! 🙂
It is absolutely phenomenal! Tried it tonight, and my husband and I loved it so much that it will be a dinner staple meal for us. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Stephanie! I’m so happy to hear you and your husband enjoyed this recipe. Thank you!!
Easy and so tasty! I made this with minced chicken.
Hi Ana! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! I’m so glad you enjoyed this recipe! 🙂