230 recipes. Page 10 of 10
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Thick-cut button mushrooms get 10 minutes in the pot, long enough to chew almost like meat, while the enoki join only for the last 3 minutes and barely wilt.
Seasoned with soup soy sauce, the clear brown broth doubles as the base for tteokguk, rice cake soup. The radish should simmer until a spoon slides through it easily; only then does its sharp bite give way to sweetness.
The oxtail soaks in cold water for an hour, gets a quick blanch, and then simmers over low heat for three hours. Left to cool overnight, the broth sets a layer of fat on top that lifts off easily, and the soup is lighter for it. Kkakdugi, cubed radish kimchi, goes on the table with it.
Gunma suiton dough is never rolled or cut. A loose flour batter is simply spooned into dashi already simmering with daikon, carrot, taro, shiitake and fried tofu, and that ease made it an everyday dish that stood in for rice when rice ran short.
Coarsely grated daikon and overnight-dried sardines simmer together, and a splash of rice vinegar at the end turns the pot into a hot, tangy soup. In the Miyazaki dialect shui means soup, and unlike chilled vinegared salads this one is eaten steaming, traditionally alongside mochi.
Everything left after filleting a cod, from the head, backbone and skin to the liver, roe or milt, goes into one big pot here. Jappa means scraps in the Tsugaru dialect of Aomori, yet these parts make a full-bodied winter miso soup. Liver mashed into the broth near the end gives it a soft richness, and fresh milt is treated as a prize. In Tsugaru cod was the fish for welcoming the New Year; families bought a whole large one at year's end and dragged it home over snowy roads, which gave rise to the phrase tara shogatsu, cod New Year.
In Kagoshima, tonjiru is made with barley miso, which is sweet and mellow. Pork, daikon, taro, konjac and atsuage (thick fried tofu) go in so generously that they nearly fill the bowl, and thin scallions and slivers of ginger go on top.
Stir-frying the beef and burdock in sesame oil before any water goes in gives the broth a toasted aroma and a light brown tint. Even after a long simmer the burdock never goes fully soft and keeps some chew. A short soak in cold water after slicing limits browning and astringency.
Simmering the whole rockfish, bones and all, gives the broth a body that fillets alone cannot. Its many fine bones call for care at the table, but they are also where the broth gets its flavor.
Buckwheat flour kneaded with crumbled firm tofu is pressed into willow-leaf shapes, pointed at both ends and slightly plump in the middle, which keeps a springy buckwheat bite. This miso soup from northern Iwate takes less work than cutting fine soba noodles yet still tastes clearly of buckwheat. Anyone with a buckwheat allergy should not be served it.
No stock is made for this soup. Sliced Korean radish simmers in plain water for six minutes, then the clams go in, and the salty juice they release as their shells open is what flavors the broth. The young radish greens (yeolmu) get only the last three minutes and reach the bowl with their stems still crisp.
Instead of being cut, the soft tofu is scooped in with a spoon, and it floats among the shrimp in large, tender pieces. Soup soy sauce is held back to keep the anchovy-kelp broth pale, and salt makes up the rest of the seasoning.
Octopus and flat slices of tofu share the pot with anchovy broth seasoned with soup soy sauce and garlic, no chili, and water dropwort and green onion are laid on top. It stays on a low flame at the table for everyone to serve themselves. The octopus is most tender right when the legs curl and turn opaque, and toughens the longer it simmers.
No soy sauce and no chili go into this octopus soup; salt alone seasons it, and the broth stays clear. Once the broth returns to a boil the octopus cooks for just three minutes, and the water dropwort (minari) goes in right before the heat is turned off, wilting for about 20 seconds.