Hot pot & soups
Bon Jiru
Bon jiru — a vegetable-packed miso soup made without fish stock for Obon
A miso soup packed with seasonal vegetables such as burdock, eggplant, and pumpkin. Following Zen Buddhist practice of avoiding killing during Obon, it skips bonito or dried-fish stock, relying instead on fried tofu and a generous mix of vegetables for its savor.
- Origin: Mie
- About 320 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Bon-jiru is a hearty miso soup packed with summer vegetables: soybeans, burdock, eggplant, carrot, kabocha, fried tofu, and juroku-sasage beans among them. In some areas it's called nanairo-jiru, or seven-color soup, for the seven kinds of ingredients used. Made without bonito or dried-sardine stock, it reads closer to a vegetable stew than a miso soup, with the sweetness of the vegetables themselves coming through.
How it's made
The summer vegetables are cut into bite-sized pieces, simmered in water, and finished with miso stirred in at the end. Without bonito or dried-sardine stock, the fried tofu and sheer volume of vegetables are said to carry the flavor instead. In northeastern Matsusaka, juroku-sasage beans, which happen to ripen right around Obon, are reportedly always included, and parts of the Higashi-Kishu coast make versions with tofu called hachihai, or a clear soup with kanpyo called hyuga-jiru for the day ancestral spirits are sent off.
Why it took this shape
Families following Zen Buddhist practice are said to avoid taking life during Obon, so this soup traditionally skips meat, fish, and even bonito or dried-sardine stock in favor of a vegetarian broth. Because it's made to welcome and honor ancestors returning for Obon, it's said to carry more kinds and more volume of ingredients than an everyday soup. Leaning on plentiful summer vegetables in place of stock seems to be the practical answer that shaped this generous, stew-like form.
Before you go
- Foods to look for in winterA guide to foods often seen in Japan around winter — nabe hot pot, fugu, oysters, crab, year-end soba, and osechi — with rough pointers for finding them.
- 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
- Aichi Miso OdenA pot of sweet red miso sits in the center of the simmering pot, and daikon, tofu, and other ingredients simmered in dashi are dipped into it before eating. While soy-based Kanto-style oden spread in Edo, Aichi is said to have settled on dipping in soybean miso instead.
- Aichi ZoniSquare mochi and mochina, a traditional Owari green, are served in a plain clear broth for New Year — a notably simple zoni. It's speculated that using miso so often in daily cooking is exactly why a clear broth is chosen for this festive occasion, deliberately leaving miso out.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- Uchimame JiruSoybeans, steamed and hand-flattened one by one with a wooden mallet before drying, are simmered with turnip and taro into a miso soup from Lake Biwa's snowy north. Once a vital winter protein source, it is also served at Buddhist memorial gatherings.
- Rakkasei no NimameShelled peanuts, grown well in the sunny south of Higashi-Kishu and the Chunansei area, are simmered soft in dashi, sugar, and soy sauce. Made in place of black soybeans at New Year's, the dish carries a pun-based wish for a healthy year ahead.
Also from Mie
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
- Arame MakiRehydrated arame, a brown seaweed once offered to Ise Shrine, is wrapped several times around sardine or saury and simmered in soy sauce and sugar. The choice of fish shifts by locality along the Toba coast.
- ChagayuRice is cooked in water steeped with a bag of roasted tea leaves. Born in Iga, where farmland was scarce and rice precious, the extra water was a way to stretch the grain further; in summer some households chill the porridge before eating.
- ChatsuJulienned daikon, carrot, lotus root, kelp, and fried tofu are simmered in vinegar and sugar, a dish from Asahi town. Its name is said to come from "chatsu," the red-lacquered vessel once used to serve vegetarian temple food, and soy sauce is deliberately left out to keep the dish pale.
- Fuki DawaraRice cooked with soybeans is wrapped in butterbur leaves into a small rice-bale shape, an Iga-area harvest offering. It is set before the rice-paddy deity at planting time to pray for a good crop, and doubles as a portable snack for breaks between farm work.
- Garagara OroshiDaikon coarsely grated with a bamboo "oni-oroshi" grater is mixed with fried tofu, fish cake, dried sardine, red and white miso, and vinegar. Some areas are said to have once paid it in place of rice tax, and it remains a palate-cleansing side at weddings, funerals, and New Year's.