Griddle & dumplings
Jiriyaki
Jiriyaki — thin griddled wheat crepe rolled around black sugar or pumpkin filling
Local wheat flour thinned with water is griddled crepe-thin, then rolled around crushed black sugar or a pumpkin filling — a Bungo-Ono snack whose name may come from the dialect word for a loose, runny batter, once eaten between spells of farm work.
- Origin: Oita Bungoono
- About 810 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Jiriyaki, handed down in Bungo-Ono, is a thin crepe-like snack made from local wheat flour batter, rolled up around crushed brown sugar or a pumpkin paste. The plain wheat flavor and the deep sweetness of brown sugar make for a simple but satisfying treat. Some households mix in rice flour for a chewier bite, or use a lightly sweetened batter rolled around yuzu miso, so the snack takes on a different character from one home to the next.
How it's made
Local wheat flour is mixed with water and salt into a batter, sometimes with egg added for a fluffier result. The batter is spread thin and cooked on a griddle like a crepe, then rolled around crushed brown sugar or pumpkin paste. More recent recipes add jam, marmalade, or fresh cream. In eras when brown sugar was scarce, some households are said to have substituted boiled mochi or a sweet-potato steamed cake instead.
Why it took this shape
Much of Oita's land, dominated by plateaus, was reportedly poorly suited to rice growing, so as irrigation channels were built, wheat farming spread and most of the harvest was milled into local flour, giving rise to a flour-based food culture. Thin-baked wheat snacks like this one are said to have emerged from that culture across the region. The name reportedly comes from a local dialect word for the batter's looseness, or from the sizzling sound of cooking, and it goes by different names in different areas, including a similar treat called "heko-yaki" in Hita.
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.
- Takeout and convenience store customsHow to answer "Shall I warm it up?", choosing chopsticks and a paid plastic bag, saying whether you'll eat in or take out, handling trash and eating while walking, and the different tax rate for takeout versus eating in.
Dishes in the same style
- AkashiyakiOctopus folded into a batter of wheat flour, jin-ko starch, egg, and dashi, cooked and dipped in a warm broth — Akashi's own take on the round batter-and-octopus dish, distinguished from takoyaki by that broth in place of sauce.
- Fuchu-yakiA Fuchu, Hiroshima take on okonomiyaki that swaps sliced pork belly for ground beef or pork worked right into the batter, so the meat's flavor is said to come through evenly in every bite.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.