The Metrics of a Good Miso Soup

Have you or any of the fools you love ever said that all miso soup is the same? If so, we forgive you. What you’re describing may not be the truth, but it is, in some ways, an ideal. I was recently in a conversation with Side Dish Mafia affiliate Pizza Vu who said exactly that, and, despite my initial incredulity, after recovering from the recoil I realized where he was coming from. Miso soups should all be the same. They share a defined, extant identity that transcends the individuality and ego of the restaurants serving them. In an ideal world, every miso soup adheres to that identity and upholds its pride.^*

As anyone familiar with Pokémon Black and White knows, the apparent dichotomy between truth and ideals needs to be reconciled if we are to make a world worth living in. Ideals grant us drive, whereas truth affords perspective. What we need in any context is neither nihilistic realism nor naïve idealism, but rather, a constant, examined awareness of both reality and our ideals for it. The distance between those two is our work to be done.

The distance between soup truth and soup ideals is our soup work to be done.

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To paraphrase a translation of Plato quoting Socrates, the unexamined soup is not worth sipping. How can we appreciate what we don’t consciously evaluate? I would paraphrase further, though, and also posit that the unexamined soup is not worth serving. In the service of that examination, and by proxy, in the service of both guests and hosts, we have constructed a basic rubric for grading miso soup. Miso soup exists as a facet of Japanese culinary convention, guided by its purpose as a warm, attentive, and comfortingly familiar extension of hospitality. As such it finds itself in an unusual place where its success as a dish, at least within its typical restaurant context, comes more from careful adherence to that convention than from inventiveness or individuality. The advantage of this for us is that it affords a consistent set of metrics with which we can evaluate it:

Miso Soup Rubric

Context (10 points)

Miso soup is not just a dish, but a service and experience. It necessarily exists in concert with the meal. One of the first things we notice about a miso soup is how it is served, and that can be broken down into several sub-metrics:

• Service (4 points): Do you have to order it directly, or does it come out surreptitiously as part of a combination meal? If you need to order it for yourself intentionally, and if it’s stranded in a peripheral side-dish category on the menu, that immediately dampens its effect. Conversely, there are few things as comforting as a wordless delivery of miso soup.
• Bowl (6 points): That bowl needs to be circular. Miso soup is meant to be picked up and sipped, and the more conducive the bowl’s shape and size is to that motion, the better. Much like a bowl of tea, the action of bringing the soup to your face, alongside the contemplative intimacy created in that action, is a fundamental part of the experience. You should never need a spoon. A point is deducted if there is one, and a point is awarded if the bowl arrives covered.

Composition (10 points)

Context is about how the soup is served, whereas composition focuses on how it is assembled. An individual miso soup is, ideally, composed within its bowl by compiling the solid ingredients, then ladling the stock/miso. When done correctly, this not only ensures measured consistency in preparation, but also affords more delicate use of ingredients. Many restaurants skip this step, instead sloshing arbitrary bowlfuls of pre-assembled soup from a larger pot in order to be more efficient. This kind of disregard is noticeable. While it may not seem that important, it has an extensive impact on not just consistency, but what the soup is able to achieve with its ingredients.

• Individual Assembly (7 points): This is a binary.
• Cross-Soup Consistency (1 point): Comparing soups with other guests at the table, we can see the degree of care involved in their preparation.
• Balance (2 points): The prevalence of solid ingredients within the miso soup dictates the focus. A careful composition will feature wakame and tofu in quantities that are neither intrusive nor frustratingly sparse. 

Ingredients (10 points)

This pertains to the handling and selection of ingredients within the soup. Occasionally we might encounter other ingredients than these, like mushrooms. When that is the case, those ingredients yield either bonus points or bonus deductions, depending on their quality, implementation, and the loudness of their presence.

• Miso (4 points): There are many varieties of miso, each with different flavor profiles and intended culinary purposes, but the main categories that we’ll be talking about in this context are white (shiro miso), yellow (shinshu miso), and red (aka miso). These range, respectively, from sweetest/lightest to darkest/deepest umami, as a result of ingredient balance and fermentation time. Shiro miso will produce a milder, sweeter, soup, whereas aka miso will give us a bolder, more savory flavor. Which miso is correct depends mostly on the type of meal it accompanies, and in sushi contexts aka miso is typically the preferred pairing. Unfortunately, the American palate often skews towards the sweeter and more approachable, and aka miso is rarer here than you might expect. Points are awarded for choice of miso, how well it synergizes with the dashi, the amount used, and the apparent quality.
• Tofu (4 points): There are two things to look at with tofu: the type and the cut. Tofu comes in several grades of firmness, each, naturally, with its own affordances and weaknesses. In miso soup, softer is always better. Soft or silken tofu is ideal for providing the soup with a pleasant, smooth, unobtrusive accent. Conversely, firmer tofu interrupts the soup with its own obstinate form. The only reason a restaurant might seek to avoid silkier tofu is the increased difficulty of working with it. Soft tofu’s fragility means that it demands individual, careful assembly. Pre-assembled cauldron soups require firmness as a precaution. Regarding the cut, it is also important that the blocks of tofu are an appropriate and consistent shape and size. Tofu is one of the easiest foods to slice, so bad cuts speak to carelessness. Full points are awarded for silken tofu, with gradual deductions for each degree of firmness, as well as deductions for sloppy cuts.
• Wakame (1 point): Is the wakame properly hydrated? Is the texture and body still there? If the stock tastes like the wakame was rehydrated by being boiled into it, that is an immediate 3 point deduction.
• Scallions (1 point): These should be thin, consistent, and sliced on a slight bias.

Dashi (10 points)

The backbone of the miso soup is its dashi. Everything else depends on this. A good, real dashi will feature a profound, layered umami; a subtle smokiness; saudade. A good dashi is an independent clause. A weak dashi is nothing more than a conduit, an obligation. A bad dashi is the exact opposite of therapy.

Grading

Miso soups are given a numerical score based on this 40-point rubric. That, then, informs a weighted letter grade. 0-5 points is an F, 5-10 is a D, 11-20 is a C, 21-30 is a B, 31-39 is an A, and a full 40 points is an S ranking.

*There are many types of miso-based soups, especially in Japan. Likewise, miso soup itself has its permutations and variations in different contexts. When we talk about “miso soup” on this blog, we are, for all intents and purposes, referring to the standard variety that serves as an accompaniment to a meal within the context of a sushi meal, not the kind that serves as a meal itself.