Reviewed by Dietitian Jessica Ball, M.S., RD
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Key Points
Miso soup is a light, comforting soup that’s easy to sip.
Miso is a fermented food that helps support nutrient absorption.
Chefs like miso soup because it’s easy to make, even when one isn’t feeling well.
Many countries have unique versions of chicken soup that people turn to as a comforting remedy when they’re feeling sick. For some of us in the United States, it’s chicken noodle soup. Italy has pastina, the brothy soup with tiny pasta. And in Mexico, it’s caldo de pollo—a rustic chicken soup with hearty chunks of vegetables. But not everyone reaches for chicken soup when they’ve got a cold. In fact, we polled chefs across the country and learned that their go-to sick-day soup doesn’t have any chicken at all.
Chefs’ Favorite Sick-Day Soup
The chefs we consulted all agree that miso soup is a go-to on days when they’re not feeling their best. According to them, it’s an excellent sick-day option, and not just because it tastes delicious.
Traditional Japanese miso soup at its simplest is a seafood-and-soy-based dashi broth with small pieces of silky seaweed and soft tofu. It’s light and simple, ideal for sipping as it has a melt-in-your-mouth quality.
Shota Nakajima, the James Beard Award-nominated chef who competed on Top Chef, says it’s a staple in Japanese households—including his own—that “just makes you feel better.” Dennis Littley of Ask Chef Dennis agrees, explaining, “The broth is easy to sip, and the miso gives it a deep savory flavor even though the soup itself can be very light. When you aren’t feeling your best and don’t have much of an appetite, a warm, flavorful broth can be much more appealing than trying to sit down to a full meal.”
While Nakajima says that miso soup can’t magically cure a cold, Yuki Gomi, the chef, writer and cooking teacher behind Yuki’s Kitchen, points out that it does have some health benefits. Miso is a fermented food full of probiotic bacteria that, she explains, “promotes gut health and helps support immunity” by aiding digestion and facilitating the absorption of important nutrients.
The savory taste sensation (also known as umami) from the amino acid glutamate—which is present in miso—can also help enhance communication between immune cells.
Pro Tips for Making Miso Soup
The chefs we spoke with don’t love instant miso soup packets. You could order takeout miso soup when you’re sick, but the chefs say it’s surprisingly easy to make, even if you’re not feeling well. Here are a couple of ways they do it at home.
Choose a mild miso: Luke Joseph, one of the chefs at Current Charcoal Grill, in Birmingham, Alabama, says that because miso is so flavorful, the soup comes together with very few ingredients. He recommends using shiro miso when you’re not feeling well, since it has a milder flavor than the more pungent red miso.
Take a shortcut: Though it’s traditionally made with a base of dashi (a fundamental Japanese soup stock), French-trained chef Nicolas Perrin says homemade miso soup can be as simple as adding a sheet of nori (an edible dried seaweed used in Japanese cuisine) to boiling water mixed with miso paste.
Or make it from scratch: Gomi swears the dashi base is key to getting the best results, and she recommends a method that requires very little hands-on time. To make it, she cold-steeps dried shiitake mushrooms and kombu (a type of seaweed) in water overnight in the fridge for the deepest flavor. From there, she warms it and adds wakame (another type of seaweed), tofu and miso paste.
Add vegetables: Nakajima likes adding some fresh vegetables to his miso soup, sharing, “I love adding plenty of ginger because it warms you up, and scallions and daikon keep everything light and comforting.”
Add the miso last: Both Gomi and Littley recommend stirring the miso paste in at the end, and off the heat, to help keep its beneficial bacteria and delicate flavors intact.
Our Expert Take
While chicken soup is a popular sick-day remedy, professional chefs say they prefer miso soup when they’re feeling under the weather. They note its light, savory broth is easy to sip and doesn’t feel heavy. Beyond comfort, miso delivers gut-friendly bacteria and rich umami flavors that support immune health. The chefs recommend using mild shiro miso and adding the paste off the heat to help preserve beneficial enzymes. Simple additions like tofu, seaweed, ginger and scallions yield a comforting, nutrient-dense broth.
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