Shiitake Mushroom and Nori ‘Noodle’ Soup

I had quite a few ingredients left over from my sushi making session including half a pack of Nori Seaweed, dried shiitake mushrooms, some wasabi paste, black sesame seeds and pickled ginger. Pretty much all of these things will keep until I fancy making sushi again but I wanted to experiment with other ways to use them up.

I’ve been making a lot of Asian soups recently because they are nice and light for the summer months but still filling enough to eat as a main meal. I decided to use the leftover dried shiitake mushrooms from the dumplings we made to make a deep mushroom flavoured broth with the nori seaweed cut into strips to act as noodles. This makes the soup carb free and low calorie but still with interesting flavour and texture.

Nori seaweed is really good for you, extremely low calorie (10 calories per sheet) and high on vitamins, antioxidants and surprisingly high in protein. Although it is better eaten raw, as with a lot of foods, using these sheets in a soup is a nice way to add it into your diet. I personally find the taste of raw nori a little over powering, especially when you don’t have the rice to balance it out, but matched with a strong mushroom broth in this soup is much more subtle.

You can add as much or as little as you fancy, I only broke up 1 sheet into thin noodles to feed 4 which I felt was enough goodness without adding too much seaweed flavour. As I get used to it I might add more!

Serves 4

Vegan, Low Carb, Low Calorie, Gluten Free option

2 Carrots
4 Spring Onions
100g (large handful) Fresh Shiitake Mushrooms or closed cup mushrooms will be fine.
2 Garlic Cloves
1 Red Chilli
1 Inch piece Ginger
Sunflower or vegetable oil
1.9 Litres Gluten Free Vegetable Stock
12 Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
1/2 Small Savoy Cabbage
1 Bunch Coriander Leaves
1 tblspn Gluten Free Soya Sauce (Check its vegan)
1 Lemon
1 Sheet Nori Seaweed

Soak the dried mushrooms in boiling water for 15 minutes (chop all the below veg whilst this is soaking)

Julienne your carrots, peel and chop the spring onions, slice your fresh mushrooms, finely chop your garlic, de seed and finely chop the red chilli, peel and thinly slice the ginger.

Slice your nori sheet into thin noodles, a pizza cutter is perfect for this. You can’t saw it with a knife so try pressing the sharp edge of the knife down on the sheet until you hear it snap. It’s extremely sturdy for such a delicate looking ingredient.

Add your chopped carrots, onions, fresh mushrooms, garlic, chilli and ginger to a large saucepan with some oil and cook for 2-3 minutes then add the vegetable stock. Drain the soaked mushrooms (reserving the liquid) and chop them up then add them to the pan.
Put a lid on and gently simmer for 5-6 minutes.

Shred your Savoy cabbage and add to the pan with the coriander, mushroom soaking liquid, soy sauce and juice of 1 lemon. Give it a good stir then continue to cook with the lid on for 5 minutes.

Remove the lid and add the nori noodles, these will only take 2-3 minutes to be ready.

Serve hot and garnished with more fresh coriander if desired.