Miso Soup with Pork Meat Balls

Its the middle of summer here in Australia right? So what was with that cold snap earlier this week. Any time the weather gets cool and wet I always crave soups, and I wasn't going to let the middle of January stop me!! I've had miso soup many times, but never have I attempted to make it myself. I thought I would give it a go. I had some pork mince so thought that I would make some nice ginger and garlic meat balls to put in the soup. After a little Googgling I discovered that pork in miso soup is called Tonjiru, usually made with thingly sliced pieces of pork. So I guess this soup is MY version of Tonjiru.

Working during the day is kinda a double edged sword. You get to make money to fuel your food loving habits, but it tires you out so that once you get home you can't be bothered cooking. This recipe is pretty easy and takes less than 10 minutes to prep and about 20 minutes to cook. So in less than half an hour you can be staring at the dishes you need to wash up....yay!

For this recipe I figured I would take the extremely easy road and use a pre-made miso paste, for the base of my soup. There are plenty of recipes out there to make your own base, but the white miso paste I tried was pretty darn good. I also had a few mushrooms in the fridge that were deprived of their water content. So I thought I would rehydrate them in the soup, after a little peeling and slicing.

Before

After, they look totally normal hey?

So here is the recipe.

Miso Soup with Pork meat balls (Maria's Tonjiru)

serves 4

400g Pork mince

2 cloves of garlic, minced

small piece of ginger, minced

4 cups water

3-4 table spoons of white miso paste

5-6 mushrooms, sliced

150 gram silken tofu, sliced into rectangular pieces

2 sheets of nori, cut into triangles

sesame oil

1. Combine pork mince, garlic ad ginger in a bowl. season with salt and pepper. Divide pork into eight individual portions and roll into balls.

2. Boil water and dissolve miso paste into it. Reduce heat to lowest possible. Drop meat balls into soup. Allow the soup to cook very slowly, making sure that the soup does not come to the boil. The meat balls will be slowly poached for 10-15 minutes.

3. Once meat balls are cooked, add mushrooms and tofu. Allow to simmer for 5 more minutes, until all ingredients are warmed up.

4. Serve in bowls with a few pieces of nori and a few drops of sesame oil.

I ate 3 bowls of this stuff to myself. I couldn't help myself, I just had to add a good helping of chilli oil, which is extremely addictive by the way! Is there anything that doesn't taste better with some good chilli oil??