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Soboro Natto
Soboro Natto — Mito's small-grain natto mixed with dried daikon strips
Mito's small-grain natto is mixed with sun- and wind-dried daikon strips and steeped in soy sauce and mirin — said to have started as a way to use natto that had not fermented quite right, and known locally as shoboro-natto.
- Origin: Ibaraki Mito
- About 100 km northeast of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Chopped dried strips of daikon are mixed into natto and simmered in soy sauce and mirin — a preserved dish centered on Mito. The soft, crumbly bite of the natto plays against the crisp snap of the daikon, sun- and wind-dried over several days, and the salty, concentrated flavor makes it good over rice or as a snack with sake.
How it's made
Daikon strips, sun-dried and wind-chilled for three days and frozen by the night wind on the last evening, are soaked back to softness, cut to size, and mixed with natto and its sauce or soy sauce. Traditionally it's left to sit for about a month so the flavor soaks in fully, though today a quicker version that marinates for a shorter time has also become common, with plenty of household variation.
Why it took this shape
The dish is said to have grown out of a habit of preserving leftover natto — made each autumn from the soybean harvest and given out to neighbors and temples — so it would keep longer. Some say it began as a way of salvaging natto whose stickiness hadn't turned out well, mixed with dried daikon, and the region's abundant daikon harvest is thought to have made this pairing a household staple.
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
Contrast
- Komo DofuDrained tofu is packed into a straw wrapper and boiled in salted water until firm — the straw leaves a pattern and a faint aroma. Once common at weddings and funerals, it is made less often now that straw wrappers are harder to find.
- Pinattsu MisoIn Ibaraki, one of Japan's top peanut-growing areas, this miso spread was devised to use peanuts too irregular for market — ground peanuts kneaded with miso and sugar, kept on hand as a rice topping or drinking snack.
Also from Ibaraki
- Aka MochiReddish sorghum flour is kneaded with hot water, boiled into dumplings, and coated with sweet bean paste or soybean flour. In flood-prone areas where rice and wheat often failed, sorghum alone survived, making this a stand-in staple.
- Ankou-nabeMonkfish meat, skin, liver, and stomach simmered with vegetables, a winter pot of northern Ibaraki. It is described as a more approachable version of dobujiru, which fishermen ate aboard their boats, and comes in miso and soy-sauce versions.
- Ankou no TomozuBoiled monkfish — flesh, fin, liver, and more — is dipped in a vinegared miso worked through with its own liver, a winter dish from the north coast often paired with fugu as one of Japan's twin winter delicacies.
- Garigari NamasuDaikon is coarsely grated with a bamboo oni-oroshi grater — hence the crunchy 'gari-gari' name — then tossed with vinegared fish. The rough texture is the point, and the dish turns up at New Year's and other gatherings.
- Gomoku InarizushiFried tofu pockets are stuffed with vinegared rice mixed with carrot, burdock, and shiitake. In Kasama, home to Kasama Inari Shrine, the mix grows even more colorful with local soba and walnuts, served to shrine visitors.
- Gosai-zukeSalted, fermented sardines are layered with daikon, yuzu, and chili for a winter preserve from the Rokko coast. As sardine catches have thinned, saury increasingly takes their place.