ROASTED MISO CAULIFLOWER MUSHROOM SOUP

With the snow and bitter cold weather I was not leaving my house. I had a head of cauliflower and some mushrooms in my refrigerator so found this enticing recipe to make for supper. I love miso soup and always keep a container of miso on hand. I thought the soup was good. My daughter who visited a couple of days later after the flavors had more time to meld thought it was “very good.”

You can find the original recipe at “Pups with Chopsticks”: Roasted Miso Cauliflower Mushroom Soup. I modified this recipe to spare the probiotics in the miso since heat above 115 F kills these good bacteria.

If you have never used miso, you may want to start with this easy and delicious recipe by Klunker's Kitchen. If you don't have udon noodles, you can substitute other Asian noodles or usual pasta.

Here's a brief video by Dr. Greger about the health benefits of miso.

What I did differently:

-Roasted 1 head of sliced cauliflower, 8 oz quartered mushrooms, 1 medium onion chopped into 12 chunks, and multiple small cloves of garlic on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Did not coat the vegetables with anything before baking. Did not use any butter or oil

-I could not find my immersion blender and do not like transferring hot soup into my food processor/blender. Once the vegetables were done, along with some reduced sodium vegetable stock, I blended some in my food processor leaving small pieces and some in my Vitamix leaving no visible pieces. I then put all of this into a pot and added the rest of the reduced sodium vegetable stock (so I used a total of 7 cups of broth so far). Did not use any chicken stock.

-Dissolved 2 TBSP white miso (I did not have yellow miso or could have used that) in 1 cup reduced sodium vegetable stock and set aside.

-After the soup simmered for 20 minutes, I removed it from the stove. After the temperature reduced to a ready-to-eat temperature, I then stirred in the dissolved miso.

-I would have topped with sliced scallions but didn't have any. I added a bit of Asian Chili Garlic Sauce to my bowl.