5-Ingredient Instant Noodle Miso Soup (2024)

As delicious as it is easy to prepare, this Noodle Miso Soup comes together in under 10 minutes and requires only 5 ingredients to make!

You know, sometimes — especially at lunch time — I find myself cooking only for me and as such, I like to keep things real fast and simple. If you factor in the fact that I’m a big Asian foodaficionado, I guess it comes as no surprise that Miso Soup is something that I really tend to go for.

Seriously, this is one of my ultimate “easy-speedy” options. I don’t think that there’s another meal out there that you can make quite as quickly as this Miso Soup, save for instant Ramen, but these hardly qualify as a meal, if you know what I mean…

This soup, on the other hand, is packed with highly nutritional ingredients: miso paste, for starters, which is excellent for you, tofu, mushrooms, green onions, rice noodles… it’s all good stuff, really!It’s pretty much like Ramen, made healthy, as far as speed andconvenienceare concerned.

When it comes to taste, though, you getten thousand times betterwith this gorgeous bowl of [almost] instant goodness.

Agreed, it does requirea little bit more prep timeand “cooking” than just plain opening up a bag of dry fried noodles, dumping them into some boiling water and adding a little packet of salty greasy powder. But not that much, trust me. And the result is really worth putting in the little bit of extra effort.

Plus, even if you didn’t have the exact 5 ingredients that the recipe calls for, you could always improvise. This is one very forgiving soup. All that you really require is the miso paste. And even this is “personalizable”: I like to use white (aka shiro) miso, but any kind will do, really. So feel free to use your own favorite variety!

For the rest, you canuse basically whatever you want. Shredded carrots, mushrooms, frozen peas, edamame, tofu, shaved bokchoy, broccoli… You get the idea. Use whatever you have on hand!

Trust me, this IS one perfect quick meal for those days when you just don’t have time to cook, or plain don’t feel like it…

Enough talking, let’s get [not so] busy cooking… Start by bringing 3 cups of salted water to a boil, and then add the rice vermicelli and cook it until tender, about 1 minute.

While the water is coming to the boil and the noodles are cooking, dilute the miso paste in a quarter of a cup of hot water and prep the rest of your ingredients.

As soon as the noodles are cooked to your liking — be careful not to overcook them: these things cook FAST — remove the pan from the heat source, add the wakame flakes and mushrooms and stir delicately.

Be sure to slice your mushrooms real thin so the heat from the soup alone will be enough to cook them.

Now stir in the diluted miso…

…and finally, add the cubed tofu.

Transfer your soup to a large serving bowl and garnish it with a little bit of chopped green onion, a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a few drops of sesame oil, if desired.

Only one thing left to do… DIG RIGHT IN!

*Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January of 2012 and has since been completely revamped and updated with better pictures. A few minor modifications to the original recipe may also have been made.