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As the season gradually moves toward winter here in Japan, I would like to write about typical Japanese winter dish, Oden today!

Japanese Oden (Nabemono)

Oden is family food in winter, and it is essentially a hotpot with dashi broth. As everybody loves this food, it is now not only available in restaurant and izakaya but also in convenience store!  So, in oden hotpot, you will find a wide variety of ingredients cooked in dashi broth, and typical ingredients are boiled egg, white radish and fish cake, but according to an article, it seems typical ingredients vary depending on region.

It seems that North regions such as Hokkaido and Aomori tend to use shell fishes, while south regions such as Okinawa and Kagoshima uses pork.  Fukuoka, Saga and Oita seems to have special fish cake with gyoza inside!!

Hmn, seafood and pork are easy to imagine, but I have never heard of (or even think of)  gyoza wrapped with fish cake… w(・o・)w   Hmn, but as it is not only 1 prefecture where people enjoying this oden item, so I assume gyoza is good to go with fish cake, too!

Also, variation is not only seen on ingredients selection but dipping sauce, too.  Shizuoka people eat oden with fine katsuobushi powder while Aichi residents eat with multipurpose miso dressing and Himeji people eat with gingery soy sauce.

Ah, gingery soy sauce sounds good, but I like eating oden with miso dressing and Japanese mustard. Ah, now you see where I am originally from!  (but trust me, Nagoya miso sauce is good to go with literally everything! :-))

What do you think about today’s article?

Please let me know about your winter food experience in Japan! I will be looking forward to hearing from you^^

Source: web R25

This is JAPAN Style!