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Yuzu Miso
Yuzu miso — citron-scented sweetened miso
In Ibara, one of Okayama's leading yuzu-growing areas, yuzu peel is simmered and worked into a miso paste with sugar and starch syrup — made in the autumn and winter harvest season and served over rice or alongside boiled vegetables.
- Origin: Okayama Ibara
- About 590 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Miso worked with yuzu peel and juice makes an all-purpose condiment. The citrus's bright fragrance layers over the miso's richness, with a gentle sweetness and tartness that brings a sense of season to the table. It's spooned over rice or used as a dip for boiled vegetables, with a soft, versatile flavor.
How it's made
Yuzu peel is shredded, simmered in water, then cooled to leach out bitterness. Miso, sugar, and starch syrup are added and simmered down slowly, finished with a splash of yuzu juice.
Why it took this shape
Condiments like this are said to have developed independently in yuzu-growing regions across the country, each making use of the citrus that starts its harvest around October and peaks in December. Ibara is said to be one of Okayama's notable yuzu-producing areas, and the custom of preparing this condiment during the autumn-to-winter harvest season is said to have taken root there.
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 Okayama
- Ami to Daikon no NitsukeTiny Setouchi shrimp called ami, richest in early autumn, are simmered with daikon in soy sauce and sugar — a pairing said to have grown from the two coming into season together, with a salted version kept for winter when rough seas kept boats ashore.
- Bachi JiruThe offcut ends of hand-stretched somen, called bachi for their resemblance to a shamisen pick, are simmered with daikon, carrot, and fried tofu in Asakuchi's Kamogata — said to hold a firmer bite than the somen strands themselves.
- Buri ZoniIn southern Okayama, New Year's zoni is built around yellowtail, a fish that changes name as it grows and so is read as auspicious, simmered with spinach, daikon, and other root vegetables — a dish passed down through the generations for the New Year's table.
- Chiya GyuJapanese Black raised in Niimi, Okayama, tracing to one of the oldest documented "tsuru-ushi" pedigree lines from the Edo period — said to benefit from the clear Takahashi river and fertile soil.
- Demi KatsudonA freshly fried pork cutlet is doused in hot demi-glace sauce over rice, a bowl said to have been devised by the founder of an old Okayama City restaurant after being won over by Western-style cooking at a Tokyo hotel — toppings vary shop to shop.
- FunameshiCrucian carp caught in the waterways of the reclaimed Kojima Bay farmland, at their least fishy in the cold season, are minced by hand and simmered with root vegetables, the rich broth then ladled over hot rice — also known as tonto-ko-jiru for the sound of the knife against the board.