Home-style ── Gohan no otomo (rice companions)
Tororo
Tororo — grated mountain yam
Fresh mountain yam or nagaimo, grated fine — the more it's ground, the stickier it turns. Thinned with dashi or miso into a soup, or spooned straight over barley rice.
What it's made of
Tororo is fresh mountain yam or nagaimo, grated fine. Grating releases the yam's sticky compounds, and the result pulls into long, clinging threads. The yam's own faint sweetness deepens once dashi or soy sauce is worked in. It's also one of the few starchy foods said to sit easily on the stomach eaten raw.
How it's made
Peeled yam is grated smooth with a grater or grinding bowl, then worked further in the bowl for an even finer stickiness. It's thinned with dashi, soy sauce, or miso and dashi into a soup, or simply spooned over barley rice. Shredded green nori is the aromatic most often used to finish it.
Why it took this shape
In the Edo period, the tororo soup of Mariko post town on the Tokaido road is said to have become famous among travelers, appearing in a Matsuo Basho poem and a Hiroshige print. Because it makes rice go down so easily, it's said to carry the old nickname 'kotozute-jiru' — the soup that speaks for itself. In Nagano's Hokushin region, the custom of eating bowl after bowl of tororo rice at the winter's turning point is said to continue today, with the way it's eaten differing from place to place.
Before you go
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
Dishes in the same style
- Ajitsuke NoriSheet nori brushed with a soy-and-sugar seasoning and toasted crisp, said to have been devised as a gift for an imperial visit to Kyoto in the Meiji era. Its snap gives way to a burst of flavor and aroma.
- Chirimen JakoYoung sardine fry, boiled in salted water and sun-dried, with the name shifting according to how far the drying goes. Western Japan tends to call it chirimen-jako, eastern Japan shirasu-boshi.