Miso Noodle Soup with Pork Meatballs
A thin, savory broth with soba and pork meatballs, built in one pot over a fire.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 9 oz
- cal / oz
- 69
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- 1000 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Sesame oil | 2 tbsp | |
|---|---|---|
| Dried minced garlic | 2 tbsp | stands in for 9 fresh cloves |
| Dried ground ginger | 1 tsp | |
| Chicken bouillon | enough for 64 oz | paste or cubes, lighter than boxed stock |
| Dried soba noodles | 12 oz | shelf-stable, not the refrigerated kind |
| Honey | 1 tbsp | |
| Sriracha or chili paste | 1 tbsp | |
| Ground pork | 1 lb | packed frozen in the cooler; ground chicken works |
| Salt and black pepper | 1/4 tsp each | |
| Miso paste | 2 tbsp | keeps for days out of the fridge |
| Dried green onion | 1/4 cup | |
| Red chile | 3 to 4 | fresno or red jalapeno, sliced at camp |
Method
- Mix the pork with the honey, sriracha, salt, and pepper in a bowl or a zip bag. Work it until the honey is gone. Roll 16 meatballs.
- Set a 6-quart pot over moderate coals or a low burner. Warm the sesame oil, then add the dried garlic, ginger, and half the green onion. Thirty seconds, stirring, or the garlic burns.
- Pour in 64 oz of water and the bouillon. Bring it to a boil.
- Drop the meatballs in one at a time. Simmer 10 minutes, until they float and hold together.
- Add the soba. Cook 5 to 7 minutes, until the noodles are soft but not falling apart.
- Pull the pot off the heat. Scoop out a ladle of broth, stir the miso into it until smooth, and pour it back. Miso boiled hard goes flat.
- Serve with the rest of the green onion and sliced chile on top. Warn people the bowls get hot.
This is a fire-and-Dutch-oven soup, not a stove-and-freezer-bag one. It needs a quart of broth per person, which means a big pot and a real heat source. Everything except the pork and the fresh chiles is shelf-stable, so the cooler load is one package of ground meat.
Two changes from a kitchen version. Bouillon replaces boxed stock, because carrying half a gallon of liquid is absurd. Dried garlic and green onion replace fresh, which loses some sharpness but survives a week in a bin. The miso goes in off the heat: it is a live ferment and boiling it strips the flavor you carried it for.
Packing
Premix the garlic, ginger, and dried onion in one bag; the bouillon and noodles ride dry. Pork goes in the cooler frozen and thaws by day two. Miso in a small screw-top jar.
Variations
- Swap the pork for a can of chicken and skip the meatball step entirely.
- Rice noodles instead of soba if someone in camp avoids wheat.
https://chuckwagoneer.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/miso-noodle-soup-with-meatballs