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Simple Miso, Tofu and Mushroom Ramen

Serve the family something different for dinner: a rich miso and mushroom broth with golden tofu and soft-boiled eggs.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Miso and sunflower share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 10 recipes mention both. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep1 hr
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, wheat, tree nuts, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Put the dried wild mushrooms in a heatproof bowl and pour over the just-boiled water. Leave to soak for about 30 minutes until soft.

  2. Lift the mushrooms out, squeeze out excess liquid, and chop them finely. Keep the soaking liquid. Stir the vegetable stock and dark soy sauce into the liquid and simmer gently for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the firm tofu, pat it dry, and cut it into cubes. Heat a little sunflower oil in a frying pan and fry the tofu for 8 minutes, turning, until golden. Set aside.

  4. Slice the chestnut mushrooms. Heat a little more oil in the pan and fry them with the chopped wild mushrooms for 5 minutes until browned.

  5. Trim the pak choi and cut into quarters. Slice the spring onions, keeping the white and green parts separate. Chop the cashews roughly.

  6. Bring a pan of water to the boil. Lower in the eggs and cook for 6 minutes until the whites are set. Cool in cold water, peel, and halve.

  7. Cook the egg noodles in a separate pan of boiling water until just tender, about 4 minutes. Drain well and divide among four bowls.

  8. Reduce the broth to a gentle simmer, not a boil. Remove from the heat, whisk in the brown miso, then add the pak choi and spring onion whites and cook for 2 minutes.

  9. Ladle the hot broth over the noodles. Top with the tofu, mushrooms, halved eggs, beansprouts, spring onion greens, chillies and cashews. Serve immediately.

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Miso + sunflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Miso + tofutop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Mushroom + tofutop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Tofu + sunflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Miso + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, sauce, miso, egg, tofu, sunflower, onion):

  1. Sesamebetter flavor fit
  2. Beansbetter flavor fit
  3. Peanutbetter flavor fit
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, sauce, miso, egg, tofu, sunflower, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).