けんちん汁 (kenchinjiru) makings

A few people have asked me how to make this soup, and while I don't often use recipes myself, I do want to help people be more healthy and this is a VERY healthy soup. If you're looking for exact measurements of everything, well, sorry but that's just not my style! I will try to explain how much I generally use of everything though.

What is Kenchinjiru?
Kenchinjiru, also known as Kenjinjiru, is a Japanese soup that came from Shōjin Ryori (Buddhist cuisine), which unlike most other traditional Japanese food, is vegetarian/vegan. The name is derived from the Zen Buddhist temple Kencho-ji (建長寺), in Kamakura (鎌倉市).
If you ever go to Japan, definitely check out Kamakura for the beautiful temples, shops selling traditional Japanese goods, lots of tasty Shōjin Ryori and Japanese sweets. It's a very popular tourist spot, for Japanese and foreigners alike, because it's quite close to Tokyo, there are many temples, shrines and monuments and it's not difficult to walk to most of them. It's a place with a lot of history and if you stick to the tour maps you can almost feel like you stepped back in time, because certain areas are quite free of modern buildings and the traditional structures are so well maintained in Japan. Kamakura also has beaches, so if you go there in the summer, that may be a good or bad thing depending on how much you like beaches and if you can tolerate crowds well. 

Getting back to the soup, it is usually made with some other ingredients that I can't get here, such as gobo (burdock root), satoimo (taro root), and konyakku (konjac). If you can get these, I suggest looking for a more authentic recipe than this one! My way is definitely not traditional. I don't miss the other ingredients but they certainly do add more depth of flavor & texture, so you should try to add them if you can. You can also try adding any other root vegetables that you like, but I would try the recipe first! This recipe usually includes sake, but I have always made it without sake and like it just fine, so I'm not going to buy sake just for this one dish. I add miso, which is not normally in this soup, but I add it for the probiotic value. Maybe all these changes would make this soup totally unrecognizable to a Japanese person, I really don't know. This is the best I can do with what I have available and I still love it!

Nutritional Profile
Daikon is high in vitamin C, carrots contain plenty of vitamin A as well as biotin and seaweed provides essential iodine. Miso is also a great source of probiotics, essential for good digestion. You can get plenty of vitamin D from mushrooms if you put them out in the sun for long enough. 

What you will need:

• 1 or 2 pieces of daikon (Japanese radish)
• 2 or 3 carrots
• 3 or 4 dried shiitake mushrooms 
• spring onions/scallions
• 1 piece of kombu or handful of shredded wakame
• firm tofu (I use Nasoya sprouted tofu for better digestion)
• miso paste - I use red miso
• sesame oil
• tamari or soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp natural salt - himalayan etc
• optional - shichimi togarashi (Japanese 7 spice)
• optional - I like to add more fresh mushrooms too, it doesn't really add to the taste at all, but mushrooms are so good for you!

To make the dashi (stock), the day before:

• gently wipe the kombu with a damp cloth, trying not to remove the white powder as that's what creates the proper dashi flavor. DO NOT rinse/wash the kombu, or you will ruin the flavor.
• soak kombu in a large bowl or pot of room temp or cold water overnight
• when you're ready to make the soup, put the kombu and water in a large cooking pot and heat on high. remove the kombu just before the water starts to boil, and set aside for later. it's important not to boil seaweed because it loses a lot of the essential nutrients!
• put the dried shiitake in room temp or cold water, in something that has a lid or cover over it. soak at least overnight, the longer the better. dried mushroom packets usually advise hot water to re-hydrate the mushrooms, but for this purpose cooler water is better. 
• when you're ready to add this to the soup, you can just remove the mushrooms, chop them up and put the water and mushrooms in together. some people like to strain the dashi and use the mushrooms in another dish, but I love mushrooms in my soups. 

ALTERNATIVELY:

• do the same process as above with the mushrooms, but instead of soaking some kombu, just use a small handful of wakame and soak it in water when you start the cooking process for the rest of the soup, or before if possible. this way is not quite as flavorful, but if you don't have any kombu, or you don't have a spare bowl to soak it in, this is still very tasty. I often end up doing this method because I always have wakame at hand for miso soup and we are very minimal with our kitchen equipment! If you remember to soak the wakame overnight, it is almost as good as using kombu.

The rest:

• chop the daikon and carrots in fairly thin, but not too small slices. Japanese carrots are much larger than the typical carrots we grow in the west, much closer to the size of a daikon, so you can keep the carrot pieces fairly large. see my photos above if you're not sure what I mean.
• put the daikon and carrots in a pot with just enough sesame oil to lightly coat the vegetables, and heat at a medium temp, for 3-5 minutes. I like to lightly brown the vegetables, which takes a few minutes, but you don't have to.
• while the vegetables are cooking, prepare the tofu. if you are using sprouted tofu, it doesn't normally need to be drained more than pouring out the water in the packaging. for regular tofu, wrap it in a cloth with something heavy on top, like a plate, and gently squeeze the water out. 
• add the tofu to the pot, by tearing it with your hands into bite-size pieces. tearing the tofu instead of cutting it allows it to absorb much more flavor.
• add the shiitake dashi at the same time as the tofu, and if you're adding more fresh mushrooms, add those too. 
• bring to a boil and then simmer for 10 minutes. 
• add the salt and continue to cook until the vegetables get to the desired texture (make sure mushrooms are properly cooked otherwise they're totally indigestible). 
• add at least a tbsp of miso, a couple tbsp of tamari/soy sauce, and stir until the miso is properly combined with the other ingredients. 
• add chopped spring onions, as many as you like. I use quite a lot more than is normal because why restrict something that is so healthy?
• if you want to add the shichimi togarashi, do that last. 

There you have it, an unnecessarily long explanation of a dish that's actually very simple once you grasp the most important part, which is the umami flavor of the dashi!