Week 2 - Miso

When I hear miso, my first thought is soup (which amuses me, since the majority of the miso mentions on this blog have nothing to do with soup), and since it's January and it's cold, soup sounded really appealing. I didn't want to make a plain miso soup, so I looked around online until I found a recipe for ginger chicken meatballs in miso broth on No Spoon Necessary. I've been wanting to make homemade meatballs for B ever since we found out about his egg allergy, so this seemed like the perfect time.

The ingredients for our adapted recipe were:

For the meatballs:
- 1 lb ground chicken ($4.99)
- 1 cup panko breadcrumbs ($0.40)
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.30)
- 1 tbsp soy sauce ($0.20)
- 2 tsp ginger paste ($0.40)
- 5 scallions, greens only (use the whites for the broth) ($0.50)
- 1 tbsp fish sauce ($0.10)
- 1 tsp lemongrass, minced ($1.29)
- 1/2 batch of cilantro, leaves finely chopped (several tbsp) ($0.50)
- 2 tbsp broth (from the broth below)
- olive oil to coat pan ($0.20)

For the broth:
- 6 cups water (although I added 2 more later because we had too many vegetables)
- 2 spoonfuls chicken bouillon ($1)
- 3 cloves of garlic, sliced ($0.30)
- 1 medium shallot, sliced ($0.33)
- 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp fish sauce ($0.10)
- 4 scallions, whites and greens sliced, plus the whites from the meatball scallions ($0.49)
- 2 tbsp white miso ($1)
- baby corn ($2.50)
- napa cabbage ($2.89)

That came out to about $17.69 ($8.88 for the meatballs and $8.81 for the broth) for soup for three for dinner with about a bowl left over for lunch. On the more expensive side for the home cooking/challenge meals we've done, but it made a lot of food and the meatballs had so many ingredients in them that they definitely didn't taste like ordinary meatballs.

The original recipe called for baby bok choy, but apparently in everyone's "it's the new year and it's time to eat healthy" madness, bok choy and baby bok choy were nowhere to be found. (Either that or there was a supply issue somewhere that we didn't know about when planning this.) We tried two different stores, and there was a single package of bok choy that we were planning to use for something else, so we went with napa cabbage here and some baby corn. I think there are a lot of vegetables that would be complementary here, so we went with what we could find. Tastewise, it was fine, but the giant napa cabbage was a little harder to manage than bok choy would have been, and I only ended up using a third of it, max (and that was with adding more to the broth after we all had our first bowls and had made some space in the pot).


Another ingredient note, this was my first time using actual lemongrass. I watched a few YouTube videos to prepare, and I thought I was ready. Remove the fibrous outside layers, mince the inner tender part finely, and you're good to go. But instead, it was like the bamboo root adventure all over again. I kept removing the outer layers because they felt fibrous, and ended up with very little lemongrass. I don't know if I tossed too much and should have used more, and I tried to follow one YouTuber's method of sticking your thumbnail in to see if there's an indentation, but very little of it seemed tender. Will need to investigate further. (Comments and advice welcome!)

The steps for the recipe were:

1. Prep. [Here I should note that the recipe total time was given as 40 minutes, with 20 minutes of cook time (not that inaccurate) and 20 minutes of prep time. Yes, I'm a little slow on prep on a good day, and yes, I'm a little rusty, but even when I wasn't, I don't think 20 minutes would have been nearly enough to do all of this. 20 minutes in, I had gotten through the garlic, the lemongrass, and the shallots, and that's it. The prep probably took at least an hour, and even if you subtract all the time I had to take to wash my burning eyes out (thanks, delicious scallions and shallots), it still wouldn't be anywhere close to 20 minutes. I feel like to do that you would need a giant counter with room to lay everything out for prep, very quick knife skills, and someone to wash all the vegetables for you. Washing vegetables thoroughly takes so long!]

Anyway, this first step of prep was for the garlic, shallots, scallions, cilantro, lemongrass, and the soup vegetables. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but time just vanished, and that was with using shortcut ginger!


2. Start the broth. I added the water and bouillon to the pot along with the garlic, shallot, ginger paste, fish sauce, and scallions.

3. Once the broth had come to a boil, I lowered the temperature and then made the miso mixture by combining the miso with 2 tbsp of the broth. After stirring to combine it into a nice paste, I added it to the pot and stirred it in. [Note that the original recipe removed the solids from the pot, but considering they were just vegetables we'd normally eat anyway and not the fibrous lemongrass or something like that, I just left them in.]

4. Add all the meatball ingredients to a large bowl and mix together. Form small meatballs and place on parchment paper-lined surface. [I can't tell you what size they were, because I have no idea. Maybe a tablespoon size or a little bigger. I tried to be consistent but didn't measure.]

5. Add the vegetables to the broth (as long as it's been simmering for at least 15 minutes) and simmer until vegetables are tender and while the meatballs cook.


6. Add olive oil to a pan over medium heat, and add the meatballs in batches to cook until golden brown. [I think they were mostly cooked by the time I was done with them, but they were going to finish in the soup anyway.]

7. Add finished meatballs to the broth and cook for another 5-10 minutes until done.

Thankfully, after A and I took turns working in the kitchen for almost 2 hours (he did some of the vegetable washing and chopping, which I really appreciated), the soup tasted really, really good. It would have been so disappointing to put in so much time and not love what we made, but the soup turned out really well, especially the meatballs. They also seemed to be a hit with baby B, and I'm glad we were able to introduce him to some new flavors we haven't given him at home before, like lemongrass and miso. I could eat a giant bowl full of those meatballs, I liked them so much.


What would I do differently next time? Start cooking earlier, and set my expectations accordingly for how much time prep will take. Watch more videos about lemongrass preparation. Choose another vegetable for the broth that wouldn't take as much time as the corn and cabbage to prepare. Figure out a way for A and I to both work in the kitchen at the same time, because having two extra hands would have made things go much more smoothly (and is how I'm still used to operating, since I haven't cooked a lot of prep-intensive things since B's arrival). Wear contacts so I don't have to keep running to the bathroom to wash out my eyes.

All that said, the recipe itself was delicious, and I would make this again. I think with better planning, quicker ingredients, and less rusty kitchen skills, things might go a little faster next time. (Hopefully!)