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Jidori no Miso Korobakashi
Jidori no miso korobakashi — jidori chicken rolled in a dry miso glaze in the pan
Jidori chicken is rolled around a dry pan with no added water, coaxed with a miso glaze without letting it catch — a home-cooked dish from around Kobayashi City, its name a western-Miyazaki dialect word for tumbling food in a pot as it cooks, the mix of vegetables and seasoning varying from house to house.
- Origin: Miyazaki Kobayashi
- About 910 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Jidori no miso korobakashi, handed down in Kobayashi and the western Miyazaki area, is a home-style dish of free-range chicken tossed and simmered in miso. "Korobakashi" is a local dialect word meaning to roll and tumble food in a pot as it cooks. Because it's cooked without added water, it's said to produce a rich flavor that concentrates the chicken's natural taste.
How it's made
The chicken is cut into bite-sized pieces and cooked in a pot without adding water, tossed and rolled as it simmers. Care is needed to keep it from scorching, and while a pressure cooker speeds things up, it's said to be best avoided since it dulls the chicken's natural flavor. Adding roughly cut, parboiled konjac, carrot, daikon, and burdock makes for a heartier dish.
Why it took this shape
Native free-range chickens have long been raised around the foot of the Kirishima mountains, and chicken dishes are said to have been a favorite across Miyazaki for a long time. Cooking it by rolling it in a pot without added water is said to have been passed down as a way of preparing chicken unique to this region. Recipes and accompanying ingredients vary by household, and the dish is said to have remained a fixture for celebrations and for entertaining guests.
Before you go
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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 Miyazaki
- Chikin NanbanFried chicken dipped in sweet vinegar and topped with tartar sauce, said to have originated in Nobeoka, Miyazaki. It's said to trace to a sweet-vinegar fried chicken devised as staff food at a Western-food restaurant in the 1950s.
- Futatabi DangoDumpling flour is kneaded, steamed with freshly picked mugwort folded in, then pounded a second time — a Nobeoka treat named for that unusual second working of the dough, wrapped around sweet bean paste and dusted with soybean flour into a soft, pale-green dumpling.
- Hie-zushiWild boar bones are simmered into a broth, then rice, millet, and vegetables are added and cooked down into a porridge — a Shiiba village dish built on millet, a grain said to have been eaten in Japan since before rice farming; whenever a boar was dressed, the porridge it made was shared around the whole village to see out the long winter.
- Hyuga Kurokawa Kabocha no NimonoHyuga kurokawa kabocha, a black-skinned heirloom pumpkin first grown in Miyazaki City, is cut into large chunks and simmered slowly in sugar and light soy sauce — lighter and less sweet than a Western pumpkin, but it holds its shape well and its skin is good to eat too.
- Iriko MochiGlutinous rice is parched and ground into iriko flour, then kneaded with starch syrup, rested, and cut into bars — a Miyazaki sweet said to have arrived from the Satsuma domain as a festival treat, once handed out to neighbors to wish for a child's healthy growth.
- Kanimaki-jiruA live yamataro crab — a mitten crab known locally by this name — is ground shell and all, mixed with water and miso, strained, then simmered gently — an autumn soup from the Kitago area of Nichinan City, the protein setting into soft curds like silken tofu as it heats, capturing every bit of the crab's flavor.