Meat ── Brand pork
Awa Biton
pork raised in Tokushima's mountain air on a rice-centered feed
Raised in the mountains of Awa City, Tokushima, at about 400 meters, on a feed centered on rice. Handlers are said to adjust the feed mix daily and avoid genetically modified crops where possible.
- Origin: Tokushima Awa
- About 520 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Raised on a feed centered on rice, said to give the fat an understated sweetness with no heaviness. Its odor is said to be mild, often described as easy to eat even for those who find pork's smell off-putting, with a bright, clean-looking lean meat and the rice said to lend the fat a faint sweetness of its own.
How it's made
Raised in the mountains of Awa City, Tokushima, at about 400 meters, on a feed centered on rice. Handlers are said to adjust the feed mix daily, avoiding genetically modified crops and aiming to keep the pigs' stress low, with a small number of farms managing the pigs closely; the mountain location makes shipping more work, but is said to reinforce the brand's small-batch care.
Why it took this shape
Awa City is rice country, and building the feed around rice reads as putting the region's main crop directly to use. Choosing a cool mountain site at 400 meters is also said to reflect a deliberate effort to keep the pigs' raising environment low-stress, and registering under the certification system is said to be aimed at keeping quality consistent across individual producers too.
Before you go
Dishes in the same style
- AitonA breeding line improved by Aichi Prefecture from three strains of stock pig. Several of the prefecture's local brand porks, including Mikawa Pork, are said to be built on this base.
- ChamitonPigs raised on feed mixed with green tea powder and sweet potato, centered in Kagoshima. The antioxidant effect of catechin and vitamin E is said to help the meat stay fresh with less of the usual pork odor.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tokushima
- Amego no HirarayakiA flat stone is heated over a hearth for hours, then a border of miso is built on it to grill amego trout, stone tofu, and konjac — an outdoor dish from the Iya valley. Its name comes from hirara, a local word for a flat stone, and it is said to have long served as a dish for entertaining guests.
- Awa BanchaA post-fermented tea from Naka and Kamikatsu towns in Tokushima, fermented by lactic acid bacteria. Coarser leaves picked from midsummer on are boiled, packed into wooden barrels, fermented for roughly 10 days to two weeks, then sun-dried — said to give a refreshing sourness.
- Awa GyuPedigreed Japanese Black fattened in Tokushima, which gained recognition after being shown at a Tokyo meat market competition in 1962 — said to have a moist, fine-grained texture and modest fat.
- Awa no ItokoniSweet potato that has been boiled then dried — yude-boshi style — is rehydrated and simmered slowly with red beans for about two hours over low heat. Fitting for a region where drying vegetables is common in winter, it is said to be a warming side dish built on the concentrated flavor of dried sweet potato.
- Awa UiroRed bean paste mixed with rice flour and Awa wasanbon sugar is poured into a mold and steamed into a chewy cake. Said to have first been made to celebrate the completion of Awa wasanbon sugar in the Edo period, with related uiro cakes also found in Nagoya and Yamaguchi.
- Awa Odori-doriSaid to be developed by fixing a local red-and-black shamo fowl and crossing it with white Plymouth Rock; reared for the JAS-standard minimum of 75 days, with shipment volume reportedly among Japan's largest.