Spicy Miso Soup with Dumplings, Almost as Easy as Just Add Water

Spicy Miso Soup with Dumplings is the hearty, healthy classic that you know to keep you warm and cozy, with the big bonus that it's super fast and easy! Shall we?

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• Ingredients You Need for Spicy Miso Soup with Dumplings
• What Kind of Miso Should I Use for Spicy Miso Soup
• What is the Best Gochujang to Use
• Spicy Miso Soup with Dumplings Recipe

Ingredients You Need for Spicy Miso Soup with Dumplings

There are a little more than a few ingredients in this list, but the actual prep and cooking is pretty minimal. Here's what you need:

Refrigerator/fresh ingredients:

• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
• baby bok choy, 4 heads sliced in half lengthwise
• carrots, 2 large
• dumplings, homemade or store-bought 2 dozen
• green onions, 2 stalks

Pantry/dry ingredients:

• avocado oil or other neutral cooking oil, 2 tablespoons
• miso, 4 tablespoons
• gochujang, 2 tablespoons plus more to taste
• soy sauce or tamari, to taste

Optional garnishes

• jalapeño, 1, thinly sliced into rings
• drizzle toasted sesame oil
• toasted sesame seeds

My favorite brands are all organic-this brand, this brand (pictured above), and this brand-and I have been able to find them in Whole Foods Markets in southern California. If you are able to get to an Asian market or specialty store, check out the miso section. It's huge! And you'll probably find these brands there too.

There are a few different types of miso that range in flavor, color, saltiness, and most importantly (to me) intensity of funk. No surprise here, but the funkier, the better. Miso can be labeled and categorized in a number of different ways, e.g. by ingredients, fermenting agent, city of origin, "style," but the easiest way for most people is to simply refer to the color.

Generally, the lighter in color the miso, those labeled "white" and "yellow," sometimes "shiro", the milder the flavor and saltiness. Sometimes, the lighter colored misos are described as sweet, though they are not actually sweetened with any kind of sugar. They are just less salty.

Darker miso, labeled "red" or "aka miso," is stronger in flavor and is usually saltier. I love darker red miso for soups and making dips for vegetables. Red miso definitely works for this recipe if you want a deeper flavor.

What is the Best Gochujang to Use

Gochujang is a Korean hot pepper paste made by fermenting chili peppers with rice and/soybeans. It has a deep-toned, savory umami flavor with a subtle background sweetness. Though sometimes literally called a "sauce," gochujang is actually more a starter ingredient used to make and flavor marinades, sauces, soups and more, and not something you would use directly out of the container at the table to season a final dish.

Like any condiment, gochujang varies in style, flavor, texture, and heat level across brands and recipes. Yes recipes! Because you can actually make your own gochujang. The base ingredients are Korean red pepper powder-called "gochugaru"-and soybeans. From there, ingredients vary, including any kind of sweetener from brown rice syrup (preferred) to high fructose corn syrup (avoid if possible!), seasonings like garlic and/or onion, sometimes grains like barley, rice or wheat, and possibly alcohol or other form of preservative.

For a full breakdown on gochujang, check out this post, Gochujang 101. In the mean time...

Which Type or Brand of Gochujang is Best?

There aren't necessarily different types of gochujang, though like any condiment, there are a range of spice levels, flavors, and textures based on different brands' exact ingredients.

Ingredients can include any kind of sweetener from brown rice syrup to high fructose corn syrup, seasonings like garlic and/or onion, sometimes grains like barley, rice or wheat, and possibly alcohol or other form of preservative. Read the labels to look out for any ingredients to which you are sensitive.

** Pro-tip: Make sure the product is "gochujang" and not "gochujang sauce," which is a pre-made sauce with gochujang as an ingredient.

Use any kind of gochujang that suits your taste and preferred heat-level. These are brands of gochujang I actually use and recommend, mostly because I look for products with no corn syrup and no wheat:

• O'Food Gochujang (pictured in all the photos on this post) is sweetened with tapioca syrup rather than corn syrup, and does not contain wheat in the ingredients, though the label indicates that it's made in a facility that also processes wheat
• O'Food Gluten Free Gochujang, same brand and ingredients as above, but specifically labeled gluten-free because it's made in a dedicated gluten-free facility
• Trader Joe's, surprisingly, has a good gochujang made in Korea and if you're new to gochujang, the container is small enough that you won't feel overwhelmed
• Mother in Law's Gochujang deserves a mention because I have tried it several times, it tastes great and most importantly it is available at many Whole Foods markets, which might be more accessible than a Korean grocery store. However, the ingredients do include wheat flour as well as malt syrup, which is made form barley (gluten).

Food for Afterthoughts

Sometimes I amaze myself. I can come home after work and toss together a lemon tart, and hey! It actually tastes good. Or slap together a trio of tiny panna cottas that...yes, actually taste good. Or go out to eat at amazing restaurants five nights in a row. Or forget dinner altogether and enjoy three bottles (was it four?)of wonderful wine. Cooking good food. Dining out on great food, and all marinated in very good wine. Tra la la la la!

And sometimes I absolutely disgust myself, because I resort to "food." That's "food" in quotation marks because many late nights in a job that most people probably would not kill for, and I have to reduce myself to...ramen.

Instag-Ramen

Ramen? What's wrong with ramen? There's nothing inherently wrong with ramen. In fact, ramen is a whole respectable cuisine unto itself with outposts like Ramenya, Asahi Ramen, and Kinchans on Sawtelle. Some of the places make the noodles by hand. The broth is made there with bones and vegetables. Menus at these restaurants have all varieties of ingredients and flavors: chicken, beef, seafood, curry, vegetables, eggs, tofu.

But tonight, I am reduced to instant ramen. It's not even the $1.99 ramen that comes in a package that still, you have to boil in a pot on the stove. At least you still feel like you're cooking. I'm talking about the thirty-five cent ramen that you rehydrate in its own styrofoam cup with hot water from the red spout on the Sparkletts cooler. It's ready in three minutes.

It's called chicken flavor but there is nothing chicken about the "broth" that seeps up sunshine yellow through the dried, twisted tangle of what looks like has been pulled out of the secure paper shredder. The noodles look like paper, which is explains why they taste like paper, too. And there are "vegetables." Before adding water, they look like those few renegade chopped vegetables that are now stuck dried on the back of the stove top because they somehow fled my wok when I made fried rice six days ago. But after I add that hot water to the cup, those hard, wrinkled, puny freeze-dried "vegetables" plump up and turn bright neon green, orange, and yellow, so they look like extremely fresh peas, carrots, and corn. So fresh, it's unnatural.

Instant ramen is terrible horrible disgusting despicable. And yet, I still slurp slurp slurp down the entire salty, MSG-laden 280 calories. *sigh* I'll either be asleep in ten minutes or wide awake from the sodium-flooded increase in my blood pressure. And tomorrow? Tomorrow I'll be a bloated, thirsty mess.

But hey, at least I get some variety. Next time, it'll be "shrimp."