When I was eight years old my family moved to southern California, where I spent the next six years of my life, before returning to the east coast. I attribute those six years of sunshine to my current fondness for winter. I missed the snow! The winter of 1993/1994, immediately following my family’s return from California, was one roughest winters on record. We seemed to get buried in snow at least once a week. My fellow Mid-Atlanticers might recall this as the year we got hit with a blizzard every Wednesday. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why everyone was so miserable about it. The snow was beautiful and cool as hell and I got to stay home from school a lot.
Now that I’m all grown up and have to do grown up stuff like drive in the snow and shovel and pay utility bills, I understand a little better why that winter got so many folks down. I still think it’s pretty cool though. Cozy meals and hot soups I suppose are a mitigating factor for lots of winter haters. (Although I consider them to be icing on the cake.) And I’m thinking this one might be what lots of folks need to get through those incredibly cold and dark days of winter. This soup is incredibly easy to make and comes together in about 25 minutes, so you can save your energy for playing in the snow. First off, tofu! I’ve made this soup with tofu straight from the package (a great option if you’re feeling lazy), but I love it way more when the tofu is pan-fried. Press it, dice it, and cook it up in a bit of oil. Check out this guide if you struggle with getting crispy pan-fried tofu right.
To make the soup, start by sautéing some aromatics in a bit of oil: garlic, ginger, and the white parts from a couple of scallions. Add some water, bring it to a boil, and simmer some julienne cut carrots for just a couple of minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, ladle out a bit of water, and whisk it together with some miso paste. Add it back to the pot with some spinach, and give everything a few stirs. Season the soup with some soy sauce.
Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle with scallions and sesame seeds.
Put on a cozy sweater, grab a spoon and dig in!
You can save time while making this by cooking the tofu and the soup at the same time. And if you’re a real pro, you can even cook the noodles at the same time. For a lazy version of this soup, skip the step of pan-frying the tofu — just cube it up straight from the package and toss it in your soup. Use 100% buckwheat soba noodles and gluten-free tamari if you’d like to keep this recipe gluten-free. You can absolutely switch things up and use your favorite veggies in place of the carrots and/or spinach. Just be sure to adjust the cook time: you’ll need more cook time for harder veggies, less for more delicate ones. The veggies in this soup are meant to be lightly cooked, so between zero and 2 minutes of cook time will be sufficient for most.
