Famous Food in Japan
When we hear "Japanese food" directly Suchi, Ramen, Miso soup & tofu jump to our mind as a japanese food, however, the Japanese cuisine has an amazing, unique, and varied dishes that goes beyond just fish and rice.
Soup, Appetizers & Main dishes
Miso soup
Miso Soup (missoshiru)* is a side dish that is always served with traditional Japanese-style breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
It is a soup made from a miso paste (fermented soybeans) and dashi (fish stock).
It is usually prepared with soy, hondashi, tofu, chives; sometimes other items, such as daikon, shrimp, fish, mushrooms, potatoes, onions, or meat, can be added, several complementary toppings are normally added to it, such as green onion, wakame seaweed, and firm tofu.
The misoshiru is served before the main course in almost every meal and with almost every dish
A traditional Japanese diet generally includes drinking miso soup daily. There are hundreds of regional varieties of miso soup, from simple soups with just seaweed and tofu to ones with crab and a variety of vegetables.
Miso paste itself comes in different types, from white, which has a sweet flavor, to a darker, saltier red.
*The word missoshiru means fermented soy broth, consisting of two words where miso means "fermented soy" and shiru, "broth".
Dashi
Dashi is an authentic soup in Japan. It is a type of soup and cooking stock often used as the base for different miso and noodle soups, donburi or rice bowl dishes, stews, and many other kinds of simmered dishes. Dashi is typically made from kombu (dried kelp), katsuobushi (dried and smoked skipjack tuna), iriko or niboshi (anchovies or sardines), or a combination of these ingredients, all of which are naturally rich in glutamates and thus deliver an intense umami flavor to many Japanese dishes.
