Start With Instant Soup To Build Your Own Japanese-Style Breakfast

While Japanese breakfast may not be a type of tea like full English and full Irish breakfasts (it is a pretty fantastic rock band, though), foodies should know about this iconic, multidimensional meal and today's hack for simpler prep: Whipping out the instant soup. Traditional Japanese breakfast is a spread of many small dishes. Miso soup (shiru), steamed rice (gohan), and a protein like grilled salmon or a Japanese rolled omelet (tamagoyaki) are central, surrounded by a variety of different small side dishes and washed down by hot green tea. It might seem like a lunchtime or dinner spread, but Japanese breakfast is all about smaller portion sizes designed to stimulate the appetite without knocking the enjoyer into a lethargic food coma. 

Plus, unlike heartier American breakfast dishes like chicken and waffles, none of the dishes included in a classic Japanese breakfast spread are particularly filling, keeping it nourishing and light. Made from scratch, miso soup combines miso paste and dashi broth, but an instant soup packet can get the job done in less time — which is especially convenient considering there are so many dishes to prepare for this elaborate spread. For quicker prep that doesn't sacrifice dimensional flavor, we like just-add-water instant soup brands like Miko Brand's dried instant miso soup packets, which come with accompaniment packets of dried seaweed flakes that hydrate in the soup. Or, beyond miso, this variety pack by Miko Brand includes green onion, wakame seaweed, tofu, spinach, and fried bean curd soup flavors.

Miso soup is often loaded with fried tofu, chopped green onions, mushrooms, or wakame seaweed. But building a memorable Japanese breakfast is all about customization and improvisation. The meal is a sensory balance of color, aroma, texture, and taste, so don't be shy about adding flavorful ingredients to your instant soup to make it your own. These simple, stripped-down instant soup mixes could be easily zhuzhed up with some pre-made ingredients from the banchan section of H Mart. If you aren't familiar with H Mart's phantasmagorical banchan section, allow us the supreme pleasure of turning you on to this gourmand wonderland. 

Here, aisles are lined with packages of pre-sliced bibimbap vegetables, stir-fried fish cakes, seasoned pickled cucumbers, spicy radish kimchi, sesame pancakes, and more, all of which can be added directly into your instant soup for a more complete meal. Bulking up your instant miso soup can also be a thrifty way to use up any produce odds and ends waiting in your fridge, or leftover brisket from dinner the night before. To take the broth to the next level, you could stir in flavorful seasonings like a drizzle of soy sauce, sweet-spicy gochujang paste, umami-bomb oyster sauce, or a splash of sharp pickled ginger brine. Or, you could season both the instant soup and the steamed rice with furikake flakes (the salmon version by JFC adds a funky kick).