109 recipes. Page 3 of 5
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This oyakodon, chicken thigh and onion simmered in dashi, soy and mirin and set with egg, gets a handful of mitsuba at the very end. The lid goes on for twenty seconds before the heat goes off; any longer and the herb's parsley-like scent is gone.
Fat from pork small intestine melts into a soy-and-mirin chicken broth and turns it cloudy and rich in this hot pot from Hakata, Fukuoka. Cabbage torn into big pieces soaks up that broth and goes soft and sweet. Once the solids are gone, noodles or rice are added to the remaining broth.
Thin shabu-shabu beef and onion, glazed in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, sit on top of thick udon in clear dashi, giving the bowl a sweet, savory topping over a light broth. The beef is cooked in a separate pan rather than in the soup, which keeps its glossy finish and stops the broth from turning murky. It needs only about 2 minutes once the seasoning is added, at the point where half the red has gone, or it toughens. A little dashi is held back at the start to soften the broth if it tastes too salty. Rinsing the boiled noodles with hot water clears off their surface starch so the soup stays clean. Sliced scallions finish the bowl with a fresh edge.
A boneless pork belly slab is rolled, tied with twine, and braised for 90 minutes in soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar. Each slice then shows fat and lean spiraled together. Thin slices sold for quick frying cannot be rolled this way, which is why the recipe calls for a whole slab. Those spiral rounds are the familiar ramen topping.
Gardenia fruit turns the rice a clear yellow, and a brothy stew of crumbled tofu, minced lizardfish and root vegetables is spooned over it. The dish comes from Usuki in Oita. One story credits the frugal local domain, which used yellow rice in place of costly red bean rice; another ties the color to paella seen through Nanban trade. Merchant households cooked a large pot of kayaku on New Year's Eve and reheated it through the first three days of the year.
A salted salmon head and backbone with some flesh still attached give the kombu stock its fish oil and savor. Sanpei jiru is a Hokkaido winter soup, and unlike Ishikari nabe, which is seasoned with miso and uses fresh salmon, it relies on the salt already cured into the fish.
Despite the name, the noodles are thick wheat, not buckwheat, served in a clear bonito broth under pork belly braised sweet and salty in soy, mirin, and sugar. Because the pork carries so much seasoning, the broth gets only a light touch of soy so it stays clean. The cooked noodles get a brief rinse in warm water rather than cold, which removes surface starch without cooling them down, and bonito flakes on top add a smoky aroma.
The dish began in Yamaguchi Prefecture when an elementary school nutritionist collected home recipes to widen the lunch menu, and it spread from schools to homes and restaurants. Chicken thigh and burdock root are coated in potato starch, fried, and tossed with edamame in a sweet dashi-soy sauce.
Barley grains and chestnuts dried for a day give chew to this steamed sticky rice, which also carries chicken, burdock, fuki, shiitake, and fried tofu glossed with soy seasoning. The dish came to the Hiruzen area of Maniwa in Okayama from Daisen okowa in Tottori, and barley entered the mix around 1972 through a local staple-food improvement campaign. Families served it at New Year, seasonal celebrations, and festivals. The liquid left from simmering the filling is kept and sprinkled over the grains partway through steaming.
Eggs are whipped for 4 to 5 minutes into a creamy foam, poured into boiling broth, and left covered off the heat until the foam puffs into a soft dome and sets. Records put the dish on breakfast trays at the Fukuroi post station in the Edo period, and the Fukuroi tourism association revived it from those old documents.
Butter melts slowly into a clear chicken and soy broth, leaving a rich, toasty aroma floating on top. Sweet corn and crunchy bean sprouts keep the salty broth from feeling heavy. The noodles boil in their own pot so their starch never clouds the soup, and the broth itself stays at a gentle simmer because hard boiling reduces it and pushes the salt up.
The lotus root, burdock and carrot go into the fat left from browning the chicken before any broth is added, so even after braising the vegetables taste of chicken. It is cooked down until only a little liquid is left in the bottom of the pot, and it reheats fine the next day.
Chicken thigh and onion simmer in nothing more than water, soy sauce and mirin, with no dashi. The eggs are beaten only lightly, so streaks of white remain, and poured in two goes: the first half sets around the edges, the second stays soft and barely trembling, and the topping ends up marbled yellow and white. A little broth is left in the pan to soak into the rice underneath.
Rice cake has no place in this New Year zoni from the Iya area of Tokushima; firm rock tofu and taro fill the bowl instead. Two long slabs of tofu are crossed on top of the taro, a shape silken tofu cannot hold, and heavily pressed extra-firm tofu is the fallback. The bowl gets just a small pour of hot broth, leaving the crossed tofu in view.
Bonito flakes steeped off the heat in a chicken and kombu stock add a layer of smoky fish aroma on top of the chicken. For a clear stock, the bones are blanched and scrubbed first, and the pot is kept below a hard boil with frequent skimming. Seasoning comes from a tare of soy sauce and mirin warmed only until it bubbles at the edges, spooned into each bowl before the hot stock is poured in. Narutomaki with its pink swirl, menma, and a soft-boiled egg sit over noodles cooked slightly under the package time so they hold their firmness in the soup.
Whole loach, a small freshwater fish, simmer with burdock, tofu and scallion in a soy-based broth until even the bones are soft enough to eat. Burdock shaved thin, like sharpening a pencil, flavors the broth. In eastern Saitama, along the Tone and Ayase rivers, loach were caught in rice paddies from summer into autumn; thick ones were simmered whole like this, and thin ones went into soup.
Chicken cooked down with soy sauce, mirin and ginger juice, and sweetened egg scrambled into tiny yellow grains, each take half of the bowl. Left unmixed, they let you change the balance with every spoonful. Both need to end up as fine crumbles, and the chopsticks keep moving in the pan the whole time.
Square rice cakes go into the clear soy-seasoned broth without grilling and turn smooth outside and soft through the middle. Aichi is known for dark soybean miso, yet this New Year soup uses none, keeping the broth light in color. Mochina, a traditional green from the Owari area, looks like komatsuna but is more tender and slightly sweet. It is added only after the rice cakes soften so it stays bright. A pinch of bonito flakes is the only garnish.
Raw Pacific cod roe gets squeezed straight from the sac into simmering soy sauce, sake, and mirin, then cooked down with shirataki until each grain clings to the noodles. This Akita preparation uses true cod roe, not the pollock roe sold as tarako or mentaiko.
Dote means riverbank. Miso is spread around the inside rim of the pot like an embankment and worked into the liquid in the middle a little at a time, and that is where this Osaka dish gets its name. Beef tendon and konjac cook slowly in sweet country-style miso; by the time the tendon turns soft and gelatinous, the sauce coats a spatula thickly.
Butter-seared steak, sliced thin and fanned over rice, gets a soy, mirin and garlic glaze made in the same pan. With no stock of its own, the sauce leans on the browned juices left after searing, and a deep crust on the meat pays off twice.
Pork back bones and trotters boil hard for hours until their collagen and fat emulsify into a milky broth thick enough to feel sticky on the lips. Soaking and blanching the bones beforehand cuts down the porky smell. That rolling boil is the opposite of the gentle simmer used for clear stocks, and it is what separates tonkotsu from an ordinary pork soup. When the pot runs low, it is topped up with hot water, never with a lower flame. Thin, firm noodles, pork belly chashu braised in soy sauce and mirin, a soft-boiled egg, and sliced green onion top the bowl. The chashu slices thin most easily when made a day ahead and chilled, and the eggs marinate in its braising liquid.
Heso daikon starts as thick rounds of blanched radish threaded on skewers and left to freeze at night and thaw by day for about a month. The hole left by the skewer looks like a navel (heso), which gives it its name, and the dried radish keeps until the following summer. In southern Miyagi Prefecture it is simmered with taro, carrot, shiitake, freeze-dried tofu, knotted kombu and kamaboko fish cake until almost no liquid remains.
Shiitake, carrot and burdock, cut into thin matching strips, are spread over the rice and cooked in dashi seasoned with soy sauce and mirin. They stay on top until the rice is done. Heavy vegetables mixed down into the grains keep the liquid from circulating and leave underdone patches.