Miso
13 recipes found
Simple Seaweed Salad
Seaweed salad is traditionally enjoyed as an appetizer or side dish in Japanese cooking and can easily be prepared at home. Made most commonly with wakame, which is mildly briny with a soft and chewy texture, the seaweed is typically dressed in a sesame soy sauce, with some versions that add ponzu, garlic, ginger, scallions or grated carrots. This classic version is the perfect versatile accompaniment for roasted proteins like fish and chicken, and pairs particularly well with tofu and rice dishes. With just a handful of basic condiments, the salad comes together quickly and can be made a few hours ahead.
Turnips With Whipped Pistachio Feta
Tender and juicy hakurei turnips, sometimes known as Japanese turnips, always feel like a treat. With a crisp flesh that is reminiscent of apples, they can be eaten raw, sliced thinly and adding a nice crunch to salads, or cooked, which coaxes out a buttery flavor. That said, if you can’t find hakurei turnips, radishes will do, in this recipe adapted from my cookbook “Linger: Salads, Sweets and Stories” (Knopf, 2025). Pan-frying turns turnips juicy, tender and extremely easy to eat. The whipped pistachio feta is joyous: creamy and nutty, a perfect base for not only these turnips, but also for just about any roasted vegetable. If you can find a vegan feta that you like, use it here, as it works just as well as dairy-based feta. If your turnips have tops, reserve them to use in this salad. Turnip greens are mild and crisp, similar in taste to bok choy, and can also be stir-fried, so never throw them away.
Parsnips With Miso and Parmesan
Parsnips roast beautifully, their edges caramelizing as they soften and sweeten in the heat. Here, they’re paired with a quick miso-lemon dressing that provides sharp notes, bolstered by crisp golden garlic and thyme warmed in oil. A final layer of arugula and Parmesan, peppery, salty and bright, continues the contrast. What starts as a simple sheet-pan roast vegetable gets lifted until complete; depending on its company, it becomes the perfect side dish, or even a warm stand-alone salad.
Miso Eggplant Salad With Chickpeas
The flawless flavor pairing found in the popular Japanese dish miso-glazed eggplant serves as inspiration for this bold and textural salad. For high-temperature roasting, cutting the eggplant into chunky pieces optimizes golden, crisp edges with a buttery and silky interior. The vinaigrette is a standout, punchy from the ginger, intensely savory from the miso, with a sweet hum from the mirin. The simplicity of a salad founded on just eggplant and chickpeas makes this an excellent weeknight option, but there are also many ways to add more heft: Incorporate a few handfuls of spinach, add some pan-fried or baked tofu, or toss with some cold soba noodles.
Miso-Labneh Onion Dip
A few small tweaks to the classic sour cream and onion number yield this truly exceptional dip, adapted from my cookbook, “Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share With People You Love” (Random House, 2025). A little miso paste and vinegar take caramelized onions — already rich in character — to a whole new level. The salt, sweetness, umami and acid balance out the onions’ earthiness and dark caramel notes. Labneh offers a welcome tangy counterpoint to the robustly flavorful onion mixture without sacrificing creaminess. And though it’s best served with potato chips, this dip also works beautifully as a sandwich spread or alongside steak, roast chicken and roasted vegetables.
Olive Oil and Honey-Miso Dressing
This is one of those dressings that somehow ends up on everything. It starts with a base of white miso, olive oil and mustard — and it’s creamy, tangy and just a little sweet thanks to honey. It’s meant for blanched green beans, but don’t stop there: Toss it with boiled and drained ramen noodles for a cold noodle situation; smother torn roasted sweet potatoes with it; or drizzle it over a crunchy pile of sliced cucumbers. You’ll find more ways to use this dressing than you expect.
Lemon-Pepper Zucchini Pasta With Dill
A summer favorite, zucchini bulks up raw salads, lends texture to muffins and bread, and adds a subtle salinity to pasta dishes. That's the role it plays in this simple miso butter pasta. A little pasta water and spoonfuls of miso melt into a delightful sauce to coat the noodles. Searing the delicate squash and tossing it with lemon zest and black pepper, then with the pasta allows zucchini to do what it does best: absorb all the flavors of the elements around it. This dish provides a playful riot of balanced yet contrasting flavors for a quick side dish or an easy dinner.
Miso-Grilled Shrimp with Corn and Shishito Peppers
You could throw some shrimp and vegetables on the grill and call it dinner, but a sauce makes the whole thing sing. Here, a pantry-friendly miso-honey sauce does double duty: It coats the shrimp before grilling, helping the exterior caramelize before the delicate meat toughens. Then, once everything’s off the grill, dunk the shrimp, corn and shishito peppers into more sauce. (You get to eat this dinner with your hands!) Leave the tails on the shrimp so they don’t fall through the grates, and also because a crispy, crackly shrimp tail is a treat to eat.
Whipped Tofu Ricotta
With the same luxe creaminess and savory notes of ricotta, my signature tofu ricotta from my book “Big Vegan Flavor” (Avery Books, 2024) works smashingly well in any recipe that calls for ricotta. For a slightly looser texture, use firm tofu. Use this ricotta to add big flavor to any and all stuffed pastas, like lasagna. It’s also great as a sandwich spread or spread onto pizza dough. Dollop leftovers onto grain bowls or salads for a creamy element. For an easy spicy variation, stir in a few teaspoons of Calabrian chile paste. (Watch Nisha make this recipe on YouTube.)
Creamy Lemon-Miso Dressing
If I were a singer-songwriter, I would write a power ballad about my love for Kismet Rotisserie in Los Angeles. The shoebox-size, mostly takeout restaurant serves the kind of food I’d eat every day if I lived in the neighborhood: golden roast chicken, fluffy pita and perfectly seasoned side dishes piled high with vegetables. But what I love most are its sauces and dressings. Especially its miso-poppy seed dressing, which I set out to re-create a couple of years ago. At some point, though, my journey took a detour, landing me here with this recipe from my book, “Good Things” (Random House, 2025), at what just might be my new favorite all-purpose dressing. Tangy, sweet, creamy and rounded out with umami, it manages to hit every note you could want in a dressing without being cloying. Add some poppy seeds for classic flavor or leave them out to make the dressing more versatile for drizzling over roasted vegetables, in potato salad or anywhere else you can imagine.
Creamy Sesame-Ginger Dressing
This is the recipe that inspired my book, “Good Things” (Random House, 2025), and my entire palate still puckers with pleasure every time I make it. After I’ve balanced and adjusted the flavors and dipped a bit of lettuce or cabbage into the dressing for a final taste, I always marvel at the way it manages to take every element — salt, acid, umami, fiery ginger, garlic and spice — right to the edge . . . without stepping over.
Eggplant Salad With Mustard-Miso Dressing
