Keep a very Open Mind

Cleansing Comforting Miso Noodle Soup with Seaweed

The seesawing hot-cold spring weather has me craving for my favorite cleansing soup. It is effortless to prepare. And like a great mathematical construct, its complexity is belied by the simple elegance of its equation.
When I was just beginning to learn how to cook, I bought a book called “How to Eat” by the most gorgeous and unapologetic gourmand, Nigella Lawson. I love her and her off-the-cuff casualness to this day. She was the post-modern Domestic Goddess. And she relished being irreverent toward conventional image (wanton chunks of butter is sexy). “In one of her books is a chapter called Temple Food “Temple…..as in ‘my body is a…..’ Well, mine’s not.” And she was honest. While these were her “restorative food”, it was really a chapter where she presents food with an Asian influence.
Of course, this is all hindsight to me. I took it all in then. I mean, Vietnamese Chicken Salad sounds very cleansing after a meal of Ham in Coca Cola and Sticky Toffee Pudding.
Fast forward to 2010. I’m a little bit wiser (I hope) and while Nigella would consider most, if not all, the food I cook to be Temple Food, I do still have what I consider “big guns.” I whip these out at least once a week. One in the repertoire is Miso Noodle Soup with Seaweed.
It will take too many pages to write about the benefits of seaweeds (Paul Pitchford is a great reference for this) but in a nutshell:
- lymphatic cleanser and blood alkalizer
- detoxifier
- removes radiation residue in the body
- lowers cholesterol and fat
- treats tumors and fibroids (in TMC, “there is no swelling that is not relieved by seaweed”)
- greatest amount and broadest range of minerals, in the most assimilable form
- contain more than ten times the calcium in milk (hijiki, arame and wakame)
- four times the iron in beef
- 100x to 500x the iodine in shellfish (600x to 3000x than fish)
And you get all these benefits with just 1/6 to ½ ounce daily – that is nothing!
Now if you add miso to that, you can call it a day.
Miso is fermented soy, rice or barley. It has amino acids and is a live food loaded with probiotic lactobacilli so its aids in digestion and digestive health. This is important as 80% of our immune system resides in our gut.
I love this soup. My kids love this soup. I think that is my litmus test. Most of the recipes in this blog have passed my “kid test.”

Miso Noodle Soup with Seaweed

1 quart water or vegetable broth
3 medium carrots, peeled into long noodles with a peeler (see photo)
1 stalk konbu
1/8 cup arame
1/8 cup wakame flakes
4 tsp. dulse
2-3 tbsp. miso, unpasteurized
½ cup sliced green onions
10 oz. buckwheat noodles

1. Cook noodles according to package instructions
2. In a pot, pour water or broth, seaweed (except dulse) and carrots, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and add miso and stir. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.
3. Take out the konbu and chop.
4. Divide noodles into four individual serving bowls. Divide the broth between the four. Top with chopped konbu, dulse and scallions.