Recipe: Tofu-Miso Stew Casserole with Sage Biscuits (2024)

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updated Jan 31, 2020

Recipe Review

It tastes and feels like a chicken pot pie, but instead it's a pile of veggies doused in a rich miso gravy.

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“Biscuit-topped” is one of my favorite word combinations. In cookbooks, it is the friend I’m always delighted to run into. Oh, hi there, are you a hearty stew plush with grounding root vegetables and maybe handfuls of tender slow-cooked chicken, all hanging out under a blanket of warm biscuits? Let’s be friends.

Four years ago, I stumbled into an accidental tradition. Once the weather starts edging towards fall, the nights stretching until they brush against the late afternoon, I make the biscuit-topped tofu miso stew from The Tassajara Cookbook. The cookbook is written by Edward Espe Brown, a celebrated chef who just happens to also be a Buddhist priest.

I grew up on heavier casseroles, brimming with meats and cheeses and cream. This casserole turned the whole concept on its head for me. It tastes and feels like a chicken pot pie, but instead it’s a pile of veggies doused in a rich miso gravy. Whole-wheat flour, homemade stock, miso paste, and dark sesame oil fill in for cheese and cream, binding the ingredients together into this totally satisfying mess of carrots, turnips, and mushrooms, dotted with pops of spicy fresh ginger.

This is, for my life, not a weeknight recipe, which I recently learned the hard (and hungry) way. It’s a three-step process and the steps are fairly involved: not difficult, just time consuming. But trust me, the results are so worth it. And if you make it on a Sunday night, it can easily become multiple meals.

Break the Rules, Casserole Rebel

The tofu-miso stew starts with a homemade vegetable stock. If you’re going to skip a part of this process, this is the one to cut. You can easily sub in a pre-made vegetable stock, which you could also dress up with some of the flavoring from this recipe like ginger, sesame oil, and tamari.

I typically use plain soy sauce instead of tamari and regular sesame oil instead of dark sesame oil, simply because that’s what I often have on hand.

Adding sage to the biscuits gives them an herby, perfume-y smell and almost cheesy umami taste, but I usually replace fresh sage with sesame seeds to highlight the sesame flavor. Also, who has a random pile of fresh sage around? Sadly not me.

Clean Out Your Veggie Drawer

I approach this recipe with one question: What’s in my fridge? This recipe really encourages that attitude.

“You needn’t use all the vegetables listed, so see what you have on hand or readily available and pick 5 or 6 of the vegetables to use in the dish,” says Edward Espe Brown in the second paragraph of the recipe. I’ve used leeks, kale ribs, varying amounts of potatoes, and the results are always great. The miso sauce and the sautéing and baking process will tame any vegetable, and bring slightly sad produce back to life.

When I make the homemade stock, I also always incorporate the leftover vegetables from the stock into the stew. Unlike the remains of a broth that simmers all day, the stock veggies here only simmer for 25 minutes, so they still have plenty to offer if you tuck them under a layer of biscuits.

Heed This Crucial Biscuit Advice

When you make the biscuits, don’t drop them on top or keep them piled high. You need to pat these down flatter than you would if you were baking them separately or the centers, influenced by the stew underneath, stay too gooey and the baking time runs too long, leading to either undercooked biscuits or an overbaked stew.

Make the Time Investment

I like this dish specifically because it’s so outside of the norm for me, without being over-the-top decadent. My weeknight cooking is a little more slapdash. Tofu miso stew requires me to hunker down and pay attention. The directions are simple, but they do span across three separate recipes: broth, stew, and biscuits. Often if I’m making a big-time investment in a dish, it’s a baked good or finicky hunk of meat. And it’s worth it, but it’s a different vibe than this stew, which always feels so wholesome and grounding.

Relish the Results

This dish is pure, autumnal bliss. The gravy is rich and salty. It robes collapsing wedges of onion and sweet potato, slippery halved mushrooms plump with sesame oil and broth. Each bite is a new surprise, revealing the chew of burdock, the unexpected heat of grated ginger, and a slightly bitter turnip nuzzled up against a candy-sweet carrot. Best of all it makes vegetables, which can get a little blah in a winter roasting rut, feel simultaneously fresh and cozy.

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