Flickr photo courtesy of Panduh.
It’s getting chilly outside! Time to get your kotatsu / fan heaters / kerosene / heated carpets / water bottles out of storage! One thing I’ve noticed about Japan is that hot water is always readily available, either for bathing, making tea, or making soup.
BUYING MISO
If you have never purchased miso, it can be a little overwhelming. It comes in bags, tubs, packets, oh my!
There are several kinds of miso. But the two real distinctions are light or dark. The white kind is sweeter (I don’t personally like it very much) and the darker kinds are saltier and more flavorful. You don’t have to use just one kind in your soup– you can mix them (although, confusingly, you can also BUY miso blends. These are called “awase miso” I’m guessing the kanji would be like this: 合わせ (awase) 味噌 (miso).
Considering the number of servings you can get from a tub or bag of it, miso is dirt cheap. Also, I swear by it as a hangover remedy, so it’s good to have around.
Technically, miso soup is made with : Dashi (broth) + miso paste + 1-2 veggies (including “sea veggies”) and perhaps a garnish.
I just like to drink the miso paste with hot water. If you are also too lazy to make or acquire broth, the other option is to buy a miso paste that has the dashi in it. look for 出し or 出汁 (dashi) and then the kanji for “put in,” 入. If you want to try your hand at making dashi, you can hit up friends or neighbors. I would suspect that most middle aged women in Saga know how to make it. OR, you can check out this page, which has instructions and recipes (including for vegetarian dashi!).
As far as brands go, I like the one that comes in tubs and has the scary baby one it. Or maybe it’s a little bald man. I don’t know the name off the top of my head. UPDATE: It’s Marukome マルコメ that I was talking about. He’s officially called マルコメ くん. So he’s not a gnome from your nightmares! (Or maybe he is, if you dislike miso.) I think this is the kind I bought before that I liked. Based on the description and ingredients, it seems to also have the dashi components mixed in.
If you still are at a loss for which miso to buy, consider having a miso party with a few friends: everyone brings a small package or tub and you can sample and find one you like (and then donate the unwanted ones to students/neighbors?)
Once opened, you should refrigerate miso. It keeps for several months. I have some that was 2 years old and it was definitely due for being thrown out–it was sort of dehydrated and hard. But if you keep it sealed up tight, you can get a lot of use out of it.
USING MISO
To make your miso soup (or miso and hot water), just mix as little of the paste (a tablespoon or two for a big bowl) with some water to thin it and then add hot water (or dashi) to fill the cup. Don’t use boiling water, because the miso contains microorganisms that are supposedly good for you. You can either use water from one of those electric pump-thermoses or boil some water and wait for it to cool a little bit.
When it’s in the water, the miso “blooms” or sort of floats up to the top. I love watching it. I’m not sure if that’s because I appreciate simple beauty, am easily amused, or if it’s really just that boring in the winter. Probably the latter two.
SOME TIPS
Here is a miso tip on a useful website I discovered : http://nihonhacks.com/japanese-food/a-short-guide-to-faster-miso-soup/ Nihonhacks looks a lot like Lifehacker, Japanese edition. If you don’t wanna go to the site, basically the tip is to use a ladle as a mixing area for the miso paste.
Put the paste in a ladle, dip into the water or broth, mix with a spoon, pour out the mixed miso (but not the clump that’s still in the ladle). Repeat until there is no more unmixed miso clump.
Finally, here is a tip for the office: In the wintertime, I buy bags of instant miso (they come as a package and inside are little packets of dashi and dried seaweed and stuff and then little packets of miso paste). Anyway, I keep a sack of these in my desk drawer and when midmorning hunger hits–or when I need a pick-me-up, I mix up a mug of miso soup and have it at my desk. 
