Fermented & preserved
Buta Miso
Buta miso — pork and miso pounded together into a keeping paste, spooned onto rice
Boiled pork is pounded together with miso and sugar into a keeping paste, with peanuts and bonito flakes added in Amami versions. It's said to have grown out of the need to use every part of the one pig a household slaughtered each year, alongside salting and other preserved forms.
- Origin: Kagoshima City, Kagoshima
- About 970 km southwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Pork and miso combine into this everyday side dish, with peanuts and bonito flakes worked in for the Amami version. The rich savoriness of pork belly mingles with the miso's salt and sweetness into a flavor versatile enough for a rice topping, a rice ball filling, chilled tofu, or a bowl of udon. Letting it rest a while is said to deepen the flavor even further.
How it's made
A block of pork belly is boiled, then cut into bite-sized pieces and mixed together with whole-grain miso, sugar, bonito flakes, and ground peanuts. Once everything is combined, it's eaten alongside rice, and letting it rest a while is said to deepen the flavor further. Changing the cut of pork or the type of miso used gives the dish a different character each time.
Why it took this shape
Amami households are said to have long kept one black-haired island pig each, prized as a precious source of protein. Using every part of the animal without waste is said to be how this long-keeping dish came about alongside the year-end pork-and-vegetable stew, and tied to a fermentation culture shaped by the region's warm climate, it has since become a pantry staple eaten across the whole prefecture.
Before You Go
Dishes in the same style
- Achara ZukeWhite melon, eggplant, and lotus root are pickled in a sweet vinegar spiked with red chili — the name is said to trace to the Portuguese 'achar', carried in through Hakata Bay's old trade, and an odd number of vegetables is used for Obon hospitality.
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Kagoshima
- Abura ZomenPork and somen are fried together with a splash of broth, the oil and stock emulsifying into a silky coat on the noodles. Just how somen took root in wheat-free Amami isn't clear, but the dish is a fixture whenever people gather, not least for the August Dance festival.
- AkumakiMochi rice steeped in wood-ash lye is wrapped in bamboo sheath and boiled for hours in more lye water — a Boys' Festival sweet said to have fed Saigo Takamori's troops in the field. The lye's alkalinity holds bacteria back, letting it keep for days in Kagoshima's heat and humidity.
- Amami Kokuto-jochuKokuto-jochu permitted to be made only in the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture. It's said to carry a sweet aroma distinctive to islands where sugarcane cultivation thrives, and around 30 breweries are said to compete on character while observing the liquor tax law's condition that rice koji be used.
- Buta JiruPork simmered with daikon, taro, and other roots in a miso broth, built on Kagoshima's own pork — the prefecture raises more hogs than any other — paired with a barley miso high in koji and correspondingly sweet. A warming bowl for winter, common at home and in school lunches alike.
- 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.