Miso soup is one of those unusual things even my youngest, super picky, only wants to eat chicken nuggets and spaghetti daughter will eat despite turning her nose at the mere idea of tofu or, God forbid, seaweed. Ewwww.

But at some point in her life she tried it and apparently liked it. I don’t remember when. I have too many kids and too many memories overflowing in my tired brain, but most likely it was at a teppanyaki joint the kids were taken to for birthdays when they were still thrilled by the overly dramatic burst of flames, onion volcanoes and the chef using his culinary instruments to flip foods in ways never imagined.

Generally the type of miso soup you get at these places are served before the actual meal and don’t have a whole lot of substance to them. I wanted to make this for our actual dinner and thought adding some noodles and chicken and topping with a slightly hard boiled egg would do the trick.

You can use any quick cooking noodle in this recipe or extend the cooking time by using just about any noodle you want. In this case, I used what I had on hand.

I have previously made miso soup with miso paste but was unable to find it at my grocery store and didn’t have time to order it from Amazon. What they did have was this Miso & Easy “broth concentrate”. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the flavor came out delicious and I couldn’t tell the difference.

Dashi is a staple in Japanese cooking made of bonito fish flakes. This HonDashi version I have is basically granules of dashi. You can find this easily on Amazon or different types of Dashi at an Asian market or sometimes the Asian section at an American grocery store. I ordered these granules on Amazon.

The directions for the dashi is 1 tsp to 1 cup of water, generally. I used 2 tbsp in this recipe but you may need to play with the amount. You can make this without dashi but if you do you can also add a tbsp of fish sauce or patis.

Since getting the Instant Pot and being able to cook meals way quicker the last week or so (yeah yeah, I’m way behind on this!), I obviously didn’t have chicken defrosted or prepared. All I had was this block of 3 giant chicken breasts frozen in a weird three breasted chicken sort of way.

I Googled to get a vague idea of how long these might take to cook and ended up doubling it to 20 minutes. 

Add frozen chicken to the Instant Pot and then the 10 cups of water, Miso & Easy and HonDashi. Cover, set to sealing and cook on high or manual pressure for 20 minutes.

While the chicken and broth cook, you can prepare the other ingredients. Take 4 to 8 ounces of tofu, depending on how much you like it, and cut into small 1/4 of an inch cubes. You can use soft, extra soft or silken.

Slice the green onions. Set tofu and green onion aside.

Once the chicken is done, quick release the Instant Pot. Open carefully and double check that the chicken is cooked through. It should be shreddable at this point. If for some reason it isn’t, cook another 5-10 minutes.

I had three breasts frozen together but I only used 1 1/2 of them. The rest I refrigerated for another meal.

Set the Instant Pot to sauté mode and add tofu, green onions, noodles and seaweed. Break the seaweed up into small pieces with your hands.

For the seaweed, you can use nori or even those dried seaweed snacks. I used about a sheet which once torn into pieces would be around 1/4 cup.

Cook for another few minutes and that’s it!

Garnish with your favorite toppings. I added a soft hard boiled egg to mine which I cooked in the Instant Pot prior to the soup. You can find the egg recipe below.