Health food: Breakfast miso

What is it?

Steaming hot, savoury miso soup is rich, aromatic and subtly sweet; the perfect breakfast for cooler weather when a green smoothie leaves you cold and fruit and yoghurt makes you shiver. Made with naturally fermented, umami-dense miso paste made of soybeans, salt and barley or rice, it is packed with nutrients, high in essential amino acids, and good for your digestive system. Breakfast miso is hardly new, having been the go-to morning broth in Japan since the seventh century, but its star is rising on healthy urban breakfast menus.

Where is it?

At the Japanese-meets-Italian Pallet Espresso next to Purple Peanuts in Collins Street, chef Kenichi Okumura's blow-torched wasabi salmon comes with nori jam, slow-cooked egg, sekihan rice and traditional miso - or a somen noodle latte, in true Purple Peanuts style. Now there's takeaway breakfast miso soup as well, available from 7am. "We're going to try miso with poached egg and rice, red miso with carrot and ginger, and Hokkaido-style chicken, corn and milk miso," says owner Peter Handras​. "We want people to know that miso soup is more than just a packet of seaweed and dried tofu."

Meanwhile, the daily east/west buffet breakfast at Chase Kojima​'s swish Sokyo​ restaurant in Pyrmont features a full-on traditional Japanese choushoku breakfast that includes grilled fish, miso soup, rice and nori. "Japanese people traditionally have the lighter white shiro miso for breakfast, and heartier red aka miso for dinner," says Kojima. For the choushoku, he blends red and white miso soup with Sokyo's own dashi stock, tofu, seaweed and daikon. And the secret? "A couple of drops of yuzu (Japanese citrus) juice, just before it goes out to the table," he says.

Why do I care?

Because it's two-hands-cupping-the-bowl warm and soothing, sip after sip.

Can I do it at home?

Yes, in the same time it takes to cook porridge. Add noodles or brown rice, or build in extra protein with last night's leftover grilled salmon or chicken.

VIC
Pallet Espresso Shop G21, 620 Collins Street, Melbourne 0403 235 410, palletespresso.com.au

NSW
Sokyo The Star, 80 Pyrmont Street, Pyrmont 9657 9161, star.com.au

Breakfast miso

Serve with pickles, seaweed, or spicy Japanese togarashi sprinkles.

100g pumpkin or carrot, peeled

10 snow peas, sliced

1 litre water or vegetable stock

20g instant dashi powder

2 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp soy sauce

100g dried soba or ramen noodles

2 tbsp red or white miso

100g silken tofu, diced (optional)

2 boiled eggs, peeled and halved

1 sheet nori, torn into little bits

2 spring onions, finely chopped

2 tsp sesame seeds

1. Shave the pumpkin or carrot into strips with a vegetable peeler, and slice the snow peas lengthwise into strips. Bring the water or stock to the boil, add the pumpkin, snow peas, dashi powder, mirin and soy and simmer for five minutes.

2. Cook the noodles in simmering, salted water for four minutes or until al dente, then drain and divide between four, warm, Asian soup bowls.

3. In a small bowl, mix a ladleful of the soup with the miso then pour back into the soup, whisking well. Add the tofu and heat through, without boiling.

4. Divide soup between warm bowls, place half an egg on top, scatter with torn nori, spring onion and sesame seeds and serve.

Makes 4 small bowls