Cooked-and-dried small sardine is used in Japan for making soup stock, although the sardine itself is not usually eaten after extraction. This sardine in granular form, however, may be more acceptable for eating as a calcium (Ca) resource. The effects of three different conditions before boiling (0 or 30 min of steeping before boiling, or put directly into boilingwater), and three subsequent boiling times (0.5, 3 or 10 min) were compared by a sensory analysis to find the most acceptable soup stock fortified with ground cooked -and-dried sardine.
The most acceptable soup stock was made when 3% of ground cooked -and-dried sardine was put straight into boiling water and boiled for 0.5 min, although the fishy odor remained perceptible. This fishy odor was masked when miso was added to produce miso soup. Agrinding time of up to 20s resulted in 2/3 of the ground sardine having a granular size of 355μ m or less. This 355μm size was sufficiently small for the grains to be acceptable in the soup and for the miso soup with suspended sardine particles to be easily drunk. This method would provide about 50mg or more of Ca per day from one bowl of miso soup.
