Home-style
Jabu
Jabu — chicken and vegetables simmered without added water
A Shin'onsen Town dish of chicken, tofu, shirataki noodles, and seasonal vegetables simmered in soy sauce and mirin without any added water. The name is said to come from the sloshing sound the vegetables' own juices make as they cook, and it has long been made in a big pot to share at festivals and family gatherings.
- Origin: Hyogo Shinonsen
- About 480 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Jabu is a dish of chicken, tofu, burdock, and carrot simmered slowly together in dashi broth, once a precious treat made from home-raised chickens in times when meat was hard to come by. Some regions use dace, a fish in season in winter, in place of meat, while others use beef or pork instead. The name is said to come either from the "jabu-jabu" sound the ingredients make as their moisture cooks out, or from a sense of using up whatever vegetables were left over.
How it's made
Bite-sized pieces of chicken are stir-fried along with similarly cut vegetables. Once the vegetables have softened, dashi broth and seasoning are added to round out the flavor. Tofu and fried tofu go in next, with scallion added at the very end. When ginger is used, it is said to work best massaged into the chicken before frying. Daikon, napa cabbage, taro, turnip, and enoki mushrooms are sometimes added as well, and shiso or yuzu can lend extra fragrance.
Why it took this shape
In an era when meat was not easily available, jabu is said to have been a valued treat cooked in a large pot and served whenever people gathered for New Year or family ceremonies. Simmering each ingredient slowly lets their flavors combine, and the dish is reported to have been prized as a nutritious way to take in plenty of meat and vegetables at once. Today, thanks to its simple preparation, it has become a year-round staple built around whatever vegetables are in season.
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.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
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
Contrast
- Dondoroke MeshiNamed for the crackling sound of tofu frying in hot oil, likened to thunder — "dondoroke" in local dialect — this is a rice dish from eastern and central Tottori. It's said to date to when each hamlet had its own tofu shack turning home-grown soybeans into tofu, using nothing but local ingredients.
- Koya-dofu-ko to Yasai no NimonoA Taka Town home dish made by simmering chicken, carrot, burdock, and dried shiitake in dashi, then stirring in the powder left over from making freeze-dried tofu. The powder still comes from the town's one remaining maker, and the dish is passed down as a family recipe.
- KasujiruA soup of daikon, carrot, and burdock simmered slowly with sake lees. Hyogo, home to the Nada sake-brewing district, is said to have long had lees close at hand, and a custom survives of making it on January 20th with stock drawn from leftover salmon or yellowtail bones.
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.