Summer Vegetable Miso Soup

This summer vegetable miso soup is a great way to enjoy the summer heat with flavorful, hearty vegetables. You will have a nutritious soup in 10 minutes with miso and lots of colorful vegetables!

Looking for more miso soup recipes? Try my Wakame Miso Soup, Mushroom Miso Soup, or Daikon Miso Soup!

Miso soup is always on our menu. We vary the vegetables we use according to what’s in season, so right now, it features zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes. It has a slightly sour taste from the tomato that goes perfectly with summer heatwaves!

📋 Ingredients

Here are the ingredients (amounts are in the recipe card below).

• Vegetables: Zucchini, eggplant, tomato (or pick your favorite vegetables. See more variations paragraph)
• Dashi powder (soup stock)
• Miso paste

Miso paste and dashi are important for making miso soup, so let me tell you about them before jumping into the recipe.

How to Choose the Right Miso

Miso is a fermented paste, and the ingredients are rice, soybeans, and salt. I recommend checking the ingredients label and picking the authentic miso when you buy miso. (Something like this miso and this miso might be good.)

Miso’s fermenting time is from 6 months to 2 years. It takes a lot of time. But some of the products are out in a much shorter time by adding additives to fake the deep umami and flavor. I don’t recommend them because it’s not real miso.

I also don’t recommend “Dashi miso,” which dashi is already included in miso. It’s handy, but it loses its authentic miso flavor.

Dashi Powder

Miso soup is one of the most iconic dishes in Japan, and dashi (soup stock) is the key ingredient for that. We have many kinds of dashi, and each has its unique flavor profile that brings a new dimension to your dish!

You can either make dashi from scratch or buy dashi powder at a grocery store. I use dashi powder (This one contains sardine, bonito, kombu, and shiitake mushrooms.) to save time in this recipe.

If you want to learn how to make it from scratch, please check these recipes: Niboshi dashi, Shiitake Kombu dashi (vegan dashi), and Awase dashi.

Vegan Adaptable

Miso soup is easy to adapt to vegan/vegetarian. Substitute dashi with vegan dashi, such as Kombu dashi (kelp) or Shiitake Kombu dashi (mushroom and kelp).

🔪Instructions

Let me walk you through the steps of this recipe. Please see the recipe card below for more detailed instructions. You can also watch this video.

1. Cut vegetables
2. Bring to a boil: Put vegetables, dashi powder, and water in a pot and bring to a boil on medium heat.
3. Simmer: lower the heat and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes until vegetables get tender.
4. Add miso paste: Add miso paste and stir gently until it dissolves.

The tomato has lost its shape and dissolved into the soup. That’s why this miso soup is slightly sour and perfect for a hot summer!

Storage

If you have leftovers, transfer them to a glass storage jar and keep them in the fridge. It will last up to 3 days.

When you eat it, warm it up in a microwave (if the jar is microwave safe) or transfer it to a pot, heat it, and turn it off right before it starts boiling.

Variations

Miso soup is a great dish to experiment with. Try adding different ingredients like other vegetables or tofu for some variety!

Other ingredients to add:

• Corn
• Green beans
• Okra
• Green leafy vegetables
• Tofu
• Aburaage (deep-fried thin tofu)
• Wakame seaweed
• Somen noodles (skinny noodles)

Somen noodles are usually served as cold noodles and dipped in noodle soup, but it’s also delicious to put it in miso soup. I hope you like the idea!

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