Detox Turmeric Ginger Miso Soup

The holiday season is a great time to gorge, but sometimes — just sometimes — I love to take a break from all that food with something clean and simple, like this Detox Turmeric Ginger Miso Soup. It cleanses you inside out, puts a glow in your skin and a spring in your step, and it tastes fabulous.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday. Desi, Jay and I took a road trip over the weekend, stopping over in Norfolk, Virginia, and driving on into Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It’s a road trip we’ve made before, but it is such a magnificent one, especially with the prize of the beautiful lighthouse in Hatteras waiting at the end, that we didn’t need much of an excuse to repeat it.

I love lighthouses — you can get me to travel anywhere to see one — and the lighthouse at Hatteras is a truly special one because — apart from being breathtakingly gorgeous with its bold, diagonal, black-and-white stripes, it is also the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States, and the second tallest in the world. A truly cool story about this lighthouse is that, in 1999, it was actually moved from its original spot. Yes, you read that right. Shoreline erosion necessitated the move from its home smack-dab on the beach to about 3,000 feet inland. It was an engineering feat that was not just brilliant, painstaking and thorough, but also nothing short of miraculous. You can read all about it here. On the way back we got to go look at the Bodie lighthouse, another beautiful lighthouse in the Outer Banks.

Back home, I’ve been trying to rid myself of some of the excesses of the holiday and eating on the road by cooking up some healthier foods. This detoxifying turmeric ginger miso soup is my go-to for times like these. It’s a one-bowl meal and it comes together in under 15 minutes, especially if you already have some dashi or vegetable stock on hand. It’s very comforting, with the salty warmth of the miso, and it’s very, very customizable– I just add whatever veggies I can find in my refrigerator.

The recipe makes enough to serve four people, but I love this turmeric ginger miso soup so much, I can guzzle down half of this recipe for lunch or dinner and not feel even a little guilty. There’s nothing here that’s not absolutely great for me, so why would I?

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Detox Turmeric Ginger Miso Soup

A cleansing, detoxifying turmeric ginger miso soup with tofu and carrots. Use dashi or vegetable stock as a base, although water is fine too.

Course Soup

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 12 minutes

Total Time 22 minutes

Servings 2 -4 servings

Author Holy Cow! Vegan Recipes

Ingredients

• 4 cups water
• 2 4- inch pieces of kombu
• 4 tbsp mellow or white miso
• 1 tsp finely grated ginger peel the ginger first
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 medium carrot grated
• 1/2 oz block of firm tofu cut into small cubes, 6
• 2 tbsp scallions or spring onions white and green parts finely chopped, or 2 finely chopped coriander leaves

Instructions

1. Begin the dashi, if using, the previous day, by soaking the seaweed in the 4 cups of water overnight.

2. Next morning, heat the water with the dashi in it. When the water is about to come to a boil, remove the pieces of dashi with a pair of tongs. Set the stock aside.
3. In a medium saucepan, heat 1 tbsp of the dashi stock with the ginger, turmeric and carrots. Saute, stirring frequently, for a couple of minutes or until the stock has dried up.
4. Measure out a cup of the dashi stock and mix the miso paste in it until everything's well-dissolved. Set aside.
5. Pour the remaining dashi into the saucepan with the ginger, turmeric and carrots, stir, bring it to a boil, and let it cook for about eight minutes.
6. Add the tofu cubes and bring back to a boil.
7. Add the scallions or coriander leaves and turn off the heat.
8. Stir in the miso paste.
9. Serve hot.
10. *Miso tends to collect at the bottom if the soup sits too long, so stir it up once before serving.

More comforting soups for the winter:

Smoky Eggplant Soup with Za’atar

Curried Cranberry Soup

Italian Wild Rice and Chickpea Soup