Grilled
Miso-dare Gyoza
Miso-dare gyoza — pan-fried dumplings dipped in a miso-based sauce
Pan-fried dumplings in Kobe, dipped in a miso-based sauce rather than the usual vinegar-soy. It is said to trace to people who ate their gyoza with miso while living in Manchuria before the war and opened a shop in Kobe after repatriating, and miso sauce is now kept on hand at the city's ramen shops too.
- Origin: Hyogo Kobe
- About 430 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Pan-fried dumplings are dipped in a miso-based sauce rather than the vinegar-soy-chili oil dip usually served with gyoza. The rich, savoury depth of the sweetened miso sauce brings out the dumplings' flavor in a different way.
How it's made
Pork or beef, napa cabbage, cabbage, garlic chives, and scallion are chopped and mixed into a filling, wrapped, and pan-fried. A dipping sauce is made from miso combined with sugar, soy sauce, sake, and often chili oil, garlic soy sauce, or vinegar, and the fried dumplings are dipped in it before eating.
Why it took this shape
Before the war, Japanese living in Manchuria are said to have preferred pan-fried dumplings over the boiled ones eaten locally, and many families reportedly dipped them in miso out of nostalgia for home. After the war, someone who had returned from Manchuria is said to have opened a diner in Kobe's Hyogo ward and served fried dumplings with miso sauce, a combination that reportedly caught on among other returnees and spread to other restaurants. Because napa cabbage, one of its ingredients, is in season in winter, the dish is considered especially good in the colder months.
Before you go
Dishes in the same style
- Abutte KamoSmall damselfish are salted overnight, then grilled whole, scales and innards left on — a bony fish often passed over elsewhere, but said to have caught on in Hakata Bay after a Meiji-era glut led someone to salt and grill the excess.
- Gohei MochiFreshly cooked non-glutinous rice is pounded, pressed flat on a skewer, and grilled with a miso glaze. Said to have originated in the mountainous Chubu region, it's traditionally made the night before a festival praying for safety in mountain work.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Hyogo
- 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.
- Ako saltA salt tied to Japan's earliest full-scale commercial saltfields, using the irihama tidal-field method perfected in the Edo period. Controlling seawater with channels and embankments let work continue regardless of the tide, and the method is said to have remained Japan's main salt-making approach for some 300 years.
- Awaji BeefPure Tajima-line cattle raised on Awaji Island, a brand producers founded in 1986 — selected for balance between lean and fat rather than marbling volume, with a small annual output.
- Banshu RamenA distinctly sweet soy broth, said to have taken root among the town's textile-mill workers.
- Banshu Tenobe SomenA document held at Ikaruga-ji temple in Taishi records the word 'saumen' in an entry dated 1418, the oldest known reference to somen in Hyogo. In the Edo period the Ryuno domain formally licensed and encouraged the trade, built on locally grown wheat, the clear Ibo River, and salt from Ako.
- Botan NabeA Tanba-Sasayama hot pot of wild boar and seasonal vegetables simmered in a broth of white and red miso, often finished with a dusting of ground Japanese pepper. Some restaurants are said to arrange the sliced boar meat like the petals of a peony.