Miso Matzo Ball Soup
Updated April 8, 2025
- Total Time
- 3¼ hours
- Prep Time
- 15 minutes
- Cook Time
- 1 hour, plus at least 2 hours’ chilling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 4large eggs
- 2tablespoons vegetable oil
- ⅓cup vegetable broth or water
- 1cup matzo meal
- 2tablespoons freshly grated ginger
- 1tablespoon finely chopped shiso or dill
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon ichimi togarashi or another crushed red pepper, to taste
- Salt
- 3tablespoons crumbled wakame (dried seaweed)
- 1long negi (Japanese leek) or 2 scallions, trimmed
- 2inches daikon radish (about 6 ounces), peeled
- 1to 1½ tablespoons dashi powder or konbu seaweed powder
- 4ounces maitake, enoki, shiitake or oyster mushrooms, torn into bite-size pieces
- 3 to 4tablespoons white or red miso paste
- 7ounces firm tofu (see Tip), drained and cut into ½-inch cubes
- 2tablespoons minced shiso leaves or fresh dill
For the Matzo Balls
For the Soup
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)
206 calories; 12 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 14 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 4 grams sugars; 13 grams protein; 556 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Prepare the matzo balls: Stir together the eggs, vegetable oil and the vegetable broth in a medium bowl. Add the matzo meal, ginger, shiso, ichimi togarashi and about 1 teaspoon salt, mixing well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
- Step 2
To shape and cook the matzo balls, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Dipping your hands first in a small bowl of cold water, mold about 2 tablespoons of matzo ball mix into the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Quickly and gently slide the matzo ball into the boiling water. Repeat with the remaining mix. You will have about a dozen or so matzo balls. Cover, reduce to a simmer, and let cook for about 20 minutes, until al dente, then leave in the pot but turn off the heat. (If making the matzo balls in advance, you can either keep them in the cooking water until ready to serve, or drain them, put them on a pan and freeze until needed. You can drop the frozen matzo balls directly into the soup as needed.)
- Step 3
While the matzo balls are cooking, make the miso soup: Soak the wakame in lukewarm water for 10 minutes. Slice the negi into thin rounds. Quarter the daikon, then slice the quarters into ¼-inch-thick pieces.
- Step 4
Drain the wakame. Bring 10 cups of water to a boil in a pot with the dashi powder. When the dashi dissolves, add the wakame, negi and the radish slices to the soup, heating until the water hits a boil, then add the mushrooms and cook for 2 minutes to warm the vegetables through and barely cook them.
- Step 5
Meanwhile, spoon about ⅓ cup of broth from the pot of soup into a small bowl and add 3 tablespoons of miso paste, stirring until smooth. Pour the miso mixture back into the soup and taste to make sure there is a good balance of miso and dashi, adding more of each to your preference.
- Step 6
Add the tofu cubes to the soup. When the soup boils, lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and the flavors melded.
- Step 7
To serve, ladle the soup into bowls, drain the matzo balls and add to the soup, and sprinkle with shiso leaves or dill.
- In the 13th century, a rabbi in France made a ruling that effectively banned kitniyot — including corn, rice, beans, peanuts and other foods — for observant Ashkenazi Jews at Passover. In 2016, the Conservative movement overturned that ruling, although Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews (and many other Ashkenazi Jews) still do not eat soybeans at this time.
Private Notes
Comments
Instead of cooking the matzoh balls in boiling water, place them into heated soup. It gives them a better flavor -- that was my mother's technique to creating tastier and more flavor full matzoh balls for the Seder, and year-round.
Also, miso is soy-based, so "kitniyot" or "mei-kitniyot" (certain products, such as beans and rice, customarily banned during Passover according to a strong Ashkenazi custom that many descendants of European Jews follow.)
If you do that, the matzoh balls drink all the soup. You have to have a large surplus of soup to do that. I add the balls to the soup after they have swollen to the desired size.
For the miso soup the miso paste to water proportion is incorrect. This recipe lists water at 10 cups. this will result in an extremely weak flavored soup. The standard for miso soup is one tbsp of miso to one cup water.
It was spectacular. I followed the recipe, substituting (because that's what I had on hand) kombu for wakame, furikake for ichimi togarashi, extra firm tofu for firm, and a bit heavier on the dashi--and it was perfect. I had my doubts about the matzoh balls as I've never deviated from my mother's recipe written on a scrap torn off a pasta box decades ago but they were really superb. Hats off to Joan Nathan. A great twist on the traditional soup for all the Japanese food lovers out there.
See Joan Nathan's note about kitniot at the end of the recipe. She has done her homework. I just finished making this soup by adapting my own chicken and matzah ball soup to lean in on the Japanese flavor. I added the daikon radish, scallions, mushrooms, and just 1 1/2 treaspoons of wakami and a teaspoon of dashi in chicken broth. I subbed chicken for the tofu. I cut the ginger down to a teaspoon in the matzah balls and of course added seltzer. My husband, who loves my soup, said it was very good. Nice for a change if change is what you are after. I'm excited to serve something a little different for Passover.
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