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Hitashi Mame
Hitashi mame — boiled green soybeans steeped in a light dashi
Green soybeans are boiled until still faintly crisp, then steeped in a lightly seasoned dashi — a dish of northern and eastern Nagano also made with the saddle-marked kurakake bean, sometimes paired with herring roe as part of New Year's osechi.
- Origin: Nagano
- About 180 km northwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Green soybeans are boiled just enough to keep some bite, then soaked in a lightly seasoned dashi broth to take on its flavor. A firm, springy texture and a faint, nori-like flavor are said to be the bean's own character. Kurakake-mame, a variety marked with a saddle-shaped pattern, is said to add an extra layer of richness.
How it's made
Green soybeans or kurakake-mame are boiled and soaked in a light dashi broth, left to sit until the flavor sinks in. Beyond eating them as they are, people are said to add soy sauce or grated daikon, or cook them into a pot of rice. Combined with herring roe as 'kazunoko-mame,' it's also said to appear in New Year's osechi spreads.
Why it took this shape
The Nishiyama area of the Hokushin region, with soil said to suit soybeans and wheat well, is said to have long grown beans and grains. With good soybeans close at hand, a simple method -- just boiling and soaking -- is said to have become the way to let the bean's own flavor come through. Its place in New Year's osechi seems to reflect how well a plain, humble bean dish suited an auspicious occasion.
Before you go
- 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.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- Agonoko UmaniThe roe of egg-bearing flying fish, caught only in early summer, is simmered in stock and soy sauce as an Oki bar snack. Its large grains and dense, sticky texture are prized as a delicacy said to be scarcer even than the fish's flesh.
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- Gudakusan Miso ShiruRoot vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- HangoroshiSticky rice, pounded only halfway to a texture called hangoroshi, is coated in sweet bean paste or roasted soybean flour — eastern Nagano's version of botamochi and ohagi, called one name in spring and the other in autumn, a festive sweet that busy farm households could put together quickly.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.
- ImonamasuJulienned potato has its starch thoroughly rinsed away, then gets stir-fried in oil and vinegar until crisp — a dish of Iiyama City said to have been eaten since the Edo period and served on large plates at gatherings and ceremonies.