This is the second food journal entry I had—another recipe I was quite comfortable with, as I made it most times I had leftover chicken from the previous recipe.
08/18/2022
A relatively quick Miso chicken soup today. Two days ago I made chicken broth with the carcass from last week, freezing some and leaving most in the fridge. I’ve done miso soup before, usually with dashi packets. This time, since I didn’t have the packets, I got dashi-flavored miso paste. I consulted the Joy of Cooking for a miso soup recipe, but theirs is essentially the same recipe you can find anywhere, so I made up my own.
First I sautéed a few oyster mushrooms, snow peas, diced green pepper, scallion whites, and torn chunks of dark and light meat chicken (also left over from last week) in a mixture of sesame and olive oil (I didn’t want the sesame oil to be overpowering, but I didn’t have vegetable oil). I added a clove of grated garlic and about the same amount of grated ginger along with a splash of soy sauce halfway in, then cooked until the peppers were soft. Then I added about four to six cups of chicken broth, along with another four to six cups of water, and brought it to a boil. I eyeballed the amount of miso paste, adding three globs with a table spoon; this turned out to be a little too much. Once the miso was dissolved, I added one bundle of udon noodles and cooked for about 12 minutes. With a few minutes left I added some halved snow peas. Then I dished it up! I didn’t have nori, so I just topped with scallion greens and waited impatiently for my bowl to cool before I dug in.
Verdict:
Taste: 13/17. Delicious (I love the taste of miso soup; the nuttiness of the soybeans spread out underneath its salty umami-ness), but unfortunately, I added too much paste. I have leftovers amounting to about two more dinners, but I may dilute it when I heat it up again. All of the vegetables were delicious and soaked in the flavor of the broth, with the exception of the mushrooms, which popped with sesame/mushroom flavor. Perhaps a bit too much sesame flavor; I would have liked the mushroom taste to shine through a little better. Live and learn, I guess. The chicken tasted like chicken underneath the miso flavor (no surprise there), so it was nice to have the chunks there. All said, it was an enjoyable (albeit slightly salty) dish, and I finished off the entire bowl.
Texture: 19/19. Just amazing. The broth was creamy; the peas had a bit of a crunch; the mushrooms were soft, springy, and gushing with broth. No complaints whatsoever about the chicken, pepper, and scallions, but the real highlight was the udon. Once the noodles were fully submerged, I went to check the time on my phone, but I got distracted by a text. I decided to just taste the noodles as they cooked, and got them just right. A little chewy, smooth, and just the right shape. The last time I think I made udon at home (during 2020 lockdown with my family) I used a pre-cooked packet (Kami-brand, I think?) to make stir-fry. These noodles are far-and-away superior—thinner, less gummy/sticky, and they didn’t tear apart so easily into a wadded mess of short fragments on the plate. Best of all, they don’t add a meaningful amount of cooking time. For a stir-fry, you could cook them in a small pot on a second burner before adding them to your wok/pan. Okay, that got a little off-topic, but I just wanted to highlight the noodles. Every part of the texture of this meal was perfect.
Satisfaction: 15/17. The noodles were a big boost in my opinion, since I screwed up by eyeballing the miso paste. In my defense, the tub I have says to add one tablespoon per cup of water, and I had a lot of liquid. All in all, quite an enjoyable meal.
Time to Eat: 55 min., but I was a bit slow off the bat and had to wait for it to cool at the end.