Tonjiru

You may know miso soup but do you know Tonjiru ? Tonjiru is a type of miso soup with various vegetables and pork while miso soup is usually with one or two ingredients and no pork. Government of Japan used to encourage us to take more than 30 different ingredients per day, 10 per meal. This was to improve nutrition balance and also to avoid risk of cancer by not eating only a few specific ingredients for a long time. This guideline was removed long time ago because it can end up with consuming too much calories but I still loosely stick to it by using as many different ingredients as possible. Tonjiru is a great dish to hit the goal. My version of tonjiru contains Chinese cabbage, daikon, carrot, sweet potato, spring onion, burdock root, konnyaku, shimeji mushroom, satsumaage fish cake, tofu and pork which is 11 ingredients already ! A bowl of rice, grilled fish along with tonjiru will make perfectly balanced meal !