Miso
6 recipes found

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.