Salmon Miso Soup

My daughter requested me to cook miso soup for her one night. So it triggered me to think of the yummy miso soup that we tried at Itamae Sushi (板前壽司) in Hong Kong. They mainly used salmon to cook for dashi, that was a big hit. Luckily, I found an Asian fish market selling salmon bone skeleton, together with much meat on it, only costs a few dollars a kilograms. If you’re from Western countries, you might not like to use the fish bones at all. Chinese families like to use them to cook fish soup. The 2 dollars-and-something salmon bones made us a very delicious miso soup last week. I didn’t really need any dashi powder at all. Our family enjoyed this natural and delicious soup very much.

Ingredients:

• 1 salmon bone skeleton, about 700g
• 4 to 5 liters water
• 2 Tbsp miso paste (soybean paste)
• 1 tsp instant dashi powder, optional
• 2 pieces tofu, cut into 1 to 1.5cm dices
• Wakame (seaweed), to preference
• 1 green onion (shallot), finely chopped for garnish

Method:

1. Bring 4 to 5 liters of water to a boil.
2. Soak wakame according to the instructions on packet until softened. Rinse and drain well.
3. Rinse and cut salmon bones into chunks. Whenever I cook fish soup, I use to briefly fry fish bones in batches over medium heat. I learned this trick from my mum to remove or reduce any unpleasant smell of fish. But if you can get very fresh fish, you can skip this step though. When frying salmon, I don’t need to add any oil because salmon has got lots of oil already.
4. Put salmon bones into boiling water and cook for 2 hours, until reduced to 4 to 5 cups of fish soup.
5. Add wakame and bring to a boil again. Gently add diced tofu. Slower heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat. Ladle out 2 tablespoons of soup to dissolve the miso paste. Gradually stir in until completely dissolved. Make sure to taste along the way you stir in the miso paste. Don’t add too much, otherwise the soup would be too salty. You can also add some instant dashi powder to add more flavour if desired. Sprinkle chopped green onions for garnish. Done.